Why is Amazon Prime Video Failing?
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- Опубликовано: 28 апр 2024
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Amazon Prime Video is the world's second biggest streaming service and spends billions every year on content. Despite this, the service seems to be floundering, failing to attract a fraction of the attention their rivals do. So... what's going wrong?
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00:00 Introduction
00:42 Is Prime Video Really Failing?
05:36 But Why is it Failing?
The biggest drawback for me with Amazon Prime is that even once you subscribe, many videos are still not free. Unlike many of the other services.
And there's no good way to find only the free content (that I'm aware of) - the Prime Video search results are cluttered with paid videos, and you can't filter by price = free
That "bait and switch" is highly annoying.
This so much. Plus the god awful interface.
@@JKA83I've always had a thing against software design in general from Amazon, and every time I try a new service from them, I hate it more
Exactly this.
It has the worst possible user interface.
Thank you! Just browsing for content is a pain yet they have some good stuff.
No, that would be Apple TV+
Actually Disney is worse and Disney absolutely rapes your browser and computer...
Hulu has the worst in my opinion
Apple TV is shocking
The worst bit is that you can’t easily find the stuff that’s free for you anymore.
They’re pushing rentals, ad-sponsored and subscription channels over free content now.
You can select prime and you will get all the movies and tv shows included in prime.
@@the0ne809 not any more. Both the browser and the app versions that I have have been updated and that feature is removed
@@TwoLeftThumbs that sucks. I just used it on my phone now and I can see the feature but they kinda changed it somewhat. Maybe on tv is different now. What are they thinking? Lol
@@the0ne809 That you’ll be tempted to rent or watch something with a subscription, maybe. I just don’t use it, instead.
I always saw this coming, which is why I saved and continue to invest in discs. If people think businesses are going to consider your access to movies and not nickel and dime you to death, they are crazy..
I hate the fact Amazon wants you to pay a yearly fee for prime and then they want more money for extra services like movies, TV shows and music etc!
I didn't know that
The interface and paid content mixed with 'free' content are the biggest user issues.
I would have thought that just finding the content is a bit of a nightmare. If you use a laptop it's a few clicks to get to the list of shows which is a mix of pay and free stuff and it's not always easy tell what is free.
Amen to this! Finding content on Prime has always been an issue, unless you don't it online . . . but who does that :/
@@lexman7179 Is there not a "free-to-me" tab for you?
There is for me.
@@ClarksonNo1 It depends what device I'm using. On my smart tv it's divided into rows so free stuff then paid stuff. The use to put a blue icon top right on all the free stuff but that's gone now. On laptop or Chrome cast I can filter. It just feels a bit more clunky than other services. That said I actually think it's got the better content out of the services and is my go to for looking for a film to watch.
@@ClarksonNo1 Not anymore, it's gone for me. Extremely frustrating and difficult to find free content.
It's funny that Clarkson's Farm has had more cultural impact through Memes than The rings of power
Well, that's what happens when you think your audience is twitter and not lord of the rings fans.
"Rings of Flour" is a disgrace to any and all viewers. Pathetic writing denigrates Tolkien's unbelievably exemplary legacy.
🐲✨🐲✨🐲✨
@@PistonHonda87 Y'see this is a failure that I can at least understand. I'm not saying they were correct, but I can see the reasoning. The Rings of Power is . . . mediocre at best and certainly not worth its budget but . . . There's 'tiers' of Lord of the Rings fans. And most of those fans are probably casual viewers of the Peter Jackson Films. Those are the people that Amazon probably intended to target with their show, not the Silmarillion or book fans.
They failed at both
Clarksons farm has had a huge impact on environmental information. Ironic considering the presenter 😂
The problem I have with Prime video is that it's awful for rewatching favourite shows. It won't remember where you are but seems to chose a random episode and always make you watch that bit when you go to watch. It's so infuriating!!
Glad I am not the only one that notices that, it doesn't seem to store details of shows that I watched a few years ago and I think 'I haven't watched x or y' for a while, it has put it back to the start (possible reason is that the show was removed and then restored and therefore is now technically a new show)
YES!
It's bizarre because Amazon owns AWS, the biggest cloud storage system in the world that is rented out to Netflix and Uber
@@AndrewBuckleBookReviewsIt's bizarre because Amazon owns AWS, the biggest cloud storage system in the world that is rented out to Netflix and Uber
well their shopping is horrible for searching also
The Boys and Invincible are two of the best shows out right now, but the problem is they don't pump out enough of it. You can't be too excited by a show that only drops 10 episodes, every 2-3 years.
And even the boys lost its edge by giving everyone superpowers
@@patrickjeffers7864 true
This is the problem with 10 episodes per season series. It takes to long to get anywhere. Older successful series always had 21 episodes per season and that held you in and made you wanting more
@Matruchus I agree TV shows use to have so many episodes in a season.
It literally takes a few weeks to binge shows like Star Trek TNG, Star Gate or Greys Anatomy (for a non sifi example).
Most modern shows you can binge in a weekend or even a day.
The Boys should’ve recieved Rings of power’s budget
It's not a problem with the available content. There are some good shows on the platform, and while there have been some expensive flops, that's not unique to Amazon.
The bigger problem is a bad user experience. The catalogue is difficult to navigate, mixes shows you can and cannot see without additional costs, and browsing is generally unenjoyable. They also only promote their big name shows like RoP and The Boys, so it's not easy to know what is even available on the platform.
The content is fine, the platform needs a redesign.
I generally agree with this. It always amazes me that a company famed for knowing everything about it's customers, doesn't know when I've already finished that show last week!!
They have the same issue with Amazon music... the UI and search functionality is total garbage
"Rings of Flour" is the biggest turd I think I've ever had the displeasure of having to bear witness. It's an obvious cash grab attempt to piggyback off of one of the greatest writers the world has ever seen... using the WORST writing as a bait and switch.
Bankrupt Bezoz. Immediately.
It is amazing to see just how bad it is. Just truly horrible. Nothing else is remotely as bad. Even their dedicated app on phones and tvs is garbage.
Nah, it comes down to content. When I log into Netflix I got lots of interesting series and options.
Amazon short list of interesting (to me) shows doesn't make me want to return as often as I return to Netflix (every other night).
I am a LoTR fan but I couldn't swallow the series, I stopped somewhere in the middle.
I am apprehensive what damage Amazon could do if they go forward to produce my favourite SF, Stargate 😕
I like how their excuse is that they want to appeal to the broadest possible audience as this is basically just another way of saying “we aspire to produce the blandest content possible” 😂
the netflix model
Nah, that's what they _do_ but not what they think they're saying. In their heads it translates to "We want _everyone_ to love us!", forgetting of course, that the only way to never make an enemy is to never have an opinion.
They think Game of Thrones 'appealed to the broadest possible audience' because of it's immense popularity. But it didn't. It was _incredibly_ unpopular with older demographics, feminist ideologies and 'think of the children' types who never managed to look past the first nipple or sex scene. It was popular with people who enjoyed violent, exciting fantasy and detailed, drawn out stories and proved as much when it tried to jump into a faster 'get the plot done' leaning harder into 'moments' than it did story.
That's a huge market, but it's not the _whole_ audience. It wouldn't have gone anywhere if it made sure to avoid putting off _any_ viable demographic.
It's always been bad, but it's getting worse. Television producers taking a perfectly well written show, and saying 'our focus group says they like this character, we want more of them'. What happens is instead of improving the show, certain character traits become blown out of proportion, and they become very one sided, shallow, and uninteresting. The more executives get involved with the creative process, the quicker the quality deteriorates.
You can't appeal to everyone with one show, that's stupid. Make 3 or 4 shows that will appeal to demographics, and give a lot of creative liberty to the writing teams, this is your bread and butter. Occasionally, when a show is really good, it appeals to everyone. Just look at Avatar the Last Airbender for example - intended for 9 year olds, but watched by all ages. Adventure Time too. Lord of the Rings even - it used to just be for fantasy nerds, but the movies came out and people caught on to how great it is.
They say they want their own Game of Thrones.. but people love it because it's super dark and true to itself. I didn't watch Rings of Power, but from what I heard it was pretty bland
yeah that idea never works, people have different and conflicting interests. They could've made different shows, each appealing to different sensibilities, aimed at a certain demographic, etc. to build a broad catalogue and capitalize on lots of people each enjoying a couple titles. But instead they want to put all their money into one or two shows expecting everyone to like it just because it's big
Yes, exactly it. No true artist/creative has ever said that.
Amazon's genius marketing and sales people had the idea of using algorithms to track what series and movies you like, and once they know, trying to charge you extra for them on top of your subscription. I was tempted by it until after I watched a movie on Prime they suddenly started charging extra for all of the sequels. "Tee hee, we're so smart! They'll never notice!" Marketers ruining a good thing, as is their speciality.
They did that to me with old TV shows. I watch the 1st season then they put the 2nd or 3rd season behind a paywall.
They have forgotten how it works. 1) Make great content 2) make it available without commercials or a paywall 3) stop the bait and switch 4) make it easy to find content
There's a few things they need to do. Fix the UI, fix the bugs, remove anything you have to pay for from the main tabs and throw it on a separate page. Also, advertise a little more.
was going to comment this, but i just checked and they changed the ui... and it must be recent because i was watching something like a week ago.
Lies again? Apex Predator
The most famous show on Amazon are The Boys and invincible are the only shows in Amazon prime that make people talk about prime and have a cultural impact that with The grand tour and Clarkson’s farm Amazon should focus on those shows more
Well the expanse was pretty popular... That's literally why I subbed... And then not.
Marvelous Mrs Maisel has been pretty impactful in America. I'd recommend it highly probably the best sitcom in years
I haven't watch the second season but Carinval Row was pretty decent
@@baronvonjo1929 Second season is even better
The the man in the high castle is what put them on the map.
A number of reasons, really. They keep greenlighting new shows only to barely promote them at all, and then proceed to cancel them after one season due to "low viewership," and like some others on here have said, there's no way to filter out content you have to pay for, which still takes up the majority of the platform 🤷♀️. Kinda defeats the purpose of subscribing in the first place if you ask me.
The biggest issue for me is the terrible quality of the Prime Video apps. I have never had a good experience on any device with the app and it actively discourages me from watching it.
Terrible user experience in apps is something Amazon are really talented at. It seems like the attitude is “Make something that just about works so we can make more money”. No fancy features or platform-specific integrations, it just does the basics.
Even their UI to AWS, which is their main income, is an unusable monster
Same here. It's literally the worst app I've ever used.
The Amazon prime app is easily the worst one. They break the seasons ( like why?) you never know what is free and what isn’t and the algorithm never find anything to watch (at least for me)
About 2 years ago I had the choice between renting a movie on RUclips and on Amazon prime. I chose Amazon Prime but the experience was bad. We couldn't get the video to play. I reached out to customer support and they basically said too bad. I was surprised because normally Amazon is very customer friendly. So I ate the loss, rented the video on RUclips without incident haven't bothered with Amazon Prime since.
bro I never had a problem with them n the free shipping is unmatched
I haven’t watched the video yet but I can tell you there’s nothing more frustrating than thinking Amazon has what you want to watch, then you see it costs money
Despite me using Amazon frequently for buying stuff, it's easy to forget Prime Video also exists on there. It doesn't help the UI didn't feel like a dedicated streaming service and more an extension of Amazon itself.
I noticed something was going wrong with Amazon Video a month or so ago. The home page in the UK is now filled with paid for and advertising content in a way that was not obvious before.
The problem with the fantasy product is that they license popular fantasy titles like LotR and WoT, but then do a poor job of ADAPTING those books into TV experiences. They don't cast actors that fit the characters from the book, they re-juggle the stories and characterizations in ways that don't make any sense, they take something that could be awesome and turn it into gold plated garbage. You can tell they threw a lot of money at production values, but if the underlying writing and casting is bad, then the results can't possibly be good.
As a WoT fan, couldn’t agree more. They spent millions on the show, and it does look good in places, but then they flush it down the toilet by changing the story they’re trying to adapt, and the writers are no Robert Jordan. The worst part is that it’s not even bad, it’s just forgettable.
"Lets take WoT and make it about a character that is supposed to disappear in book 5!"
I was going to join prime looking forward to WoT and LOTR, until seeing and reading the reviews.
They didn't license LOTR, they licensed a few pages from the Tolkienverse which explicitly don't overlap with LOTR.
Was The Rings Of Power necessary? I haven't got round to watching it yet.
The issue with Amazon Prime Video is how terrible the interface is on EVERY device that I have used. Some videos are included, some are $20, some seasons of a show might be included but others must be bought. It is just VERY hard to navigate.
Always wondered who was paying $20 to "rent" a movie... Anyway, I dropped Prime a few month ago after having been a prime member since the beginning of the concept. I miss nothing and now feel ashamed that I was duped out of money all these years. Also free tip: Hulu has almost the exact same programming, other than channel-specific originals. Having one or the other is all you need, having both is basically overlapping.
if I'm gonna pay for a movie it better be on a disc. Never got renting or buying digital movies on these services because they can still be taken of the site and then your money is just gone.
Before watching, my guess is that mostly it's because you pay for Prime, but you still don't get access to all they offer. You have to pay for each channel additionally. And even then, some shows and movies still require extra payment. While a subscription to Netflix gets you access to anything on their site/app.
AND YOU STILL HAVE TO PAY MONTHLY FOR AUDIBLE AND KINDLE. They've also made it more difficult to get kindle books, to the device. I prefer actual books. But if you're traveling, it is easier to throw a kindle in the bag, with potentially many books, than to try to pack many books.
its amazing to me how many streaming services have terrible site design how hard is it really to make a user friendly experience
Correction: Lena Waithe created The show Them. A Jordan Pelle-esche race thriller series. You also missed their acquisition of MGM/Epix that was a huge deal giving them access to classic IP such as James Bond, Robocop, silence of the Lambs, Rocky and more. They now have 3 different streaming service 2 paid and 1 free.
My biggest complaint about Prime is all this other crap they tack on and raising the cost. I have never used the video or music service, I really just have it for shopping, Whole Foods and free shipping. I wish they would break out all this extra crap and just lower the subscription fee.
The way I see it, Prime Video's issue is nobody actually likes Amazon. They've got an undeniable Evil Corp energy. The only reason they have any sales is we really really like convenience.
One problem is certainly region/language-locked content. If you subscribe to a VPN service, you can more or less bounce around the world on Netflix without problem, although you may occasionally find a server gets temporarily blocked. With Amazon, your subscription is generally tied to a national account, so you can't watch UK prime with a French account, and if you go abroad, you may even need to VPN back home to access your prime service (or discover that the content is region-locked). On top of this, perhaps due to what rights Amazon owns of the show in each country, in Germany I've often found English-language shows to be available only in their dubbed German version, making it unwatchable for discerning viewers on that platform.
But yes, on top of all that, the shows just aren't as good as Netflix, HBO and Disney 🤷♂️
Agreed. I suspect that this will be the future for VPN's and streaming in general.
I ran into the same problem when I was living in Germany. My wife is Polish so it’s always nice if we can have the English language and Polish subtitles or vice a versa. Sometimes on Netflix will have the original language in French, with an over speak of Polish, with English subtitles. So three different languages are going at one time. This stuff is impossible on Amazon prime, and the user interface is garbage that’s why I canceled it after like two months.
@@hashtagunderscore3173 In the EU, you can legally bypass it cause of a rule Brussel enforced
They block most vpns from my exp. I’m in the USA 🇺🇸 though
@@Kevfactor Within the EU, cause of an enforce regulation from Brussels you can bypass it.
Every streaming service, is obligated to show you the same content as in the country (if within EU) as you made the account, without geoblocking restrictions. So if you travel within EU, so if you for example move from country A to B, you still see the same content and if you don't want to loose it, you can/have to make a new account in the country you moved to.
The worst in my opinion ( as someone who lives outside the USA ) is still the fact that they release a movie or show that immediately gets taken off site for my country ( I have to now pay to rent the same movie) . Why am I paying an annual fee if every single movie I want to watch is only for rent or purchase .
Rings of Power was a primary reason why i cancelled my Prime account, which in retrospect is very ironic.
Amazon needs to clean house. Wasteful spending, antagonizing fanbases, bad content, bad leadership, etc really proves the corp needs to clean house. There is no reason Amazon shouldn't be on par or bigger than Netflix in streaming besides pure incompetence. Hopefully buying MGM would fix this but knowing how incompetent execs work, infighting and meddling will likely prevent any hint of remaining competent MGM production capacity from gaining prominence.
I love how they use Power of Ring when they discussing about why Amazon Prime is failing
Finest failure ever
Pretty much the reason I ended my subscription to Prime, even though I didn't really use Prime Video. When I read some production staff member spit on Tolkien's fans, without any exageration on my part, treating them as racists (yeah, all of the fans, no distinction), I said good bye. Great strategy, taking a beloved franchise and then insulting its fans, while making a mess of it.
The issue lays with their UI in my opinion. I scroll trying to find something to watch only to find out its not included in Prime.
Yeah, I already had Prime, and Prime Video has its flaws to be sure, but I've enjoyed a lot of things on there. Clarkson's Farm, The Grand Tour, The Boys, Invincible, The Legend of Vox Machina, and more. Plus it's the only place I can find Thomas the Tank Engine for my kids haha.
It is a bit a challenge since Amazon seems to have a mostly adult only experience, while netflix is being more teenager friendly and Disney+ more for family and kids. And since teens and kids are the larger influential markets, PrimeVideo is gonna be a challenge unless they break into that market
I enjoy the mature content on prime such as the boys, hunter etc. I couldn't care less subs numbers that's for braindead sheep.
I wholeheartedly disagree lol. Maybe it's a regional thing, I have Prime India but Netflix is way too vulgar for me. I can't turn on Netflix in the presence of my family. Whereas Prime, there is a vast array of family friendly options.
@@anaghas6657 It varies, of course, per cultural tastes and practices that define vulgarity, but for a generic American style, Netflix is the ridiculous teenage energy that it has, while Prime is placing its bets on the film/TV-centric rules, which teens find boring or non interesting to stay and watch.
At least in Australia, Disney has a lot of adult content, it really surprised me as I expected just disney content which it has of course but it has some really violent and graphic cont too. I don't have kids and I don't mind some of the disney content every so often but if it was limited to that, I would have dropped it ages ago but its one of my fav streamers, more so than Netflix and Prime is on the bottom of my list. Disney has Kingsman, Only Murders in the Building, Fantastic 4, Princess, The Girl Nextdoor, Predator, Dr Strange, Braveheart, Kiss of the Dragon, Transporter 2, The Devil Wears Prada, Cruelella and tons else. Its great and its all in 4k, no need to spend a fortune for it like Netflix.
Amazon will buy Netflix and Disney plus just like Netflix did to Blockbuster in 2010.
Thanks for the video! It reminded me to unsubscribe since I don't buy from Amazon other than once ever while and I don't watch anything from them for a while now...
I enjoy the mature content on prime such as the boys, hunter etc. I couldn't care less subs numbers that's for braindead sheep.
I hate the fact that I could be watchin a show on another app for free and poof it disappears and reappears on Amazon Prime for $2.99 / episode. WTH.
Well, Rings Of Power drove me away from Prime, and free postage wasn't enough to entice me back.
A prime subscription is the jack of all traits master of none. They offer you so many different types of subscription services all under the prime banner, but every single one is a mediocre version of something else another company offers. Also it's really stupid that if you have prime audible is still $15 a month and prime gives you nothing for it.
Amazon does a bad job of promoting a lot of their shows. Sure, they advertise the hell out of their biggest shows like Rings of Power or The Boys, but I'm constantly finding smaller Amazon original shows that had little to no promotion.
I recently found a really good show called Sneaky Pete, it ran from like 2015 to 2018, and I had never heard of it. I discovered Undone last year, a very creative show that uses rotoscoping, and that show premiered in 2019. They have all these great shows and they barely advertise them at all.
What Prime Video did to LoTR was a cultural butchery.
I can only imagine what fans of other types of contents have to say about Prime Video's "delivery".
As someone who hypothetically may or may not pirate most of their media, I have to say focusing on sports seems like a good idea. It's a lot harder to find and theres much higher incentive to watch live. Maybe they could put the money they saved into making a decent interface and not forcing you to pay extra for half the content.
Which is ironic because of their terrible UI, they constantly try and show me sport, and I'd rather die than watch it but can't block it in any way. :( If I could just block the sport nonsense, I'd at least have space to be shown a few more totally random things one of which I might watch.
@@jonevansauthor it's also ridiculous when you actually want to watch sport. I get that scrolling through a bunch of TV shows and episodes has a point, but they exported that to their sport section. I had to go painstakingly go through random matches (some not even in the right tournament) before finding the live one people actually wanted to watch hidden somewhere in the middle. Very fun when you work at a sports bar with a crowd of drunk fans.
Even their business decisions with sports seem badly thought out. Like, people who want to watch the super bowl will be able to see it elsewhere. The sports I enjoy watching, like climbing and skateboarding, I have to watch via youtube compilations months after happening. Amazon could probably get exclusive streaming rights to like, seven niche sports for less than a single episode of rings of power. And actually have a unique selling point.
@@ScouseJazmin I can't say that I'm not delighted that it's bad for sports watchers. Maybe they'll cancel it? :D
But seriously, I feel your pain. It should be super simple to tell them what you want to watch - particular sports, reality TV, documentaries, sci-fi etc and then present you that stuff.
There could still be areas where you could also see paid content, but it shouldn't make it hard to find the stuff you have access to and want to watch, no matter the category.
@@jonevansauthor ikr they seem like such simple, obvious fixes? And it's not like there aren't tons of other streaming platforms for them to learn from. But also, Jeff Bezos is an awful human being so if his teams incompetence is losing him money and customers I can only celebrate lmao
Hypothetically… I see, you’re asking for a friend. 😉
I was there when the subreddit for Psycho Pass went on fire when the latest season was bought by Amazon. A lot of people didn't like it with how problematic Prime is. The same goes for the movie that continues it.
If I remember correctly, the issue was that it was only available in Japan, which made a lot of people furious.
Yeah some anime stuff is distributed haphazardly, like Evangelion series is with Netflix but the remake movies are with Amazon
@@yugen3968 The licensing issue has been a problem for anime for years now, even before crunchyroll existed. I think the key problem with Amazon now is they went for the IP for the new ones first rather than filling their library first with the old ones. It's not wrong for them to do this if they are only targeting Japan (If what I hear is true that Amazon is everywhere there) but they should have at least known what lengths an anime community outside Japan will go if a giant barrier presents itself.
Any anime community will gladly throw more money at you the more accessible the content is. Even Bandai knows this which is why they made Gundaminfo here on YT and allowed multiple streaming sites to show their content with same day release on Japan.
Now with ads in every movie or series!
Unless you pay extra!
Canceled yesterday.
ENOUGH!
So... They're paying ludicrous amounts of money for "big names" who I've never heard of, rather than spending that money on making an actual show. Sobbing that that wouldn't work.
It has a lot to do with a lack of good promotion,most of the time when I end up watching something on prime it's because someone I know has told me that they happen to come across a good show or film,they need to tell people what they've got
Part of this is discoverability. That interface is garbage. Even if they have a show available and the show is relevant to you the odds of you finding it without searching for the show by name is close to zero.
Agree and this is probably their number one issue.
You left Prime Video in hospital with third-degree burns. 🤣
Frankly I think that guys metrics are working, the first season of jack Ryan and reacher are the best shows on the platform.
Stupid thing is if you find a TV show, when the series has several seasons, it list every season separately
As a huge LoTR fan, I consider RoP to be poo.
However, I will always renew subs for The Boyz...sublime
I enjoy the mature content on prime such as the boys, hunter etc. I couldn't care less subs numbers that's for braindead sheep.
HBO waited until season 7 to start buggering up GoT. Amazon screwed up LoTR from the get-go.
By targeting everyone, you target nobody. You need to fulfill niches, and budget within that niche. If one of them catches on, fantastic. Consider upping the budget, and expand on what the fans love. Game of Thrones, was very niche, nerdy, and only something book lovers knew about. Cobra Kai, a series I haven't even heard of, about martial arts (I think, according to IMDB). The Mandalorian, a show set in the Star Wars universe (nerdy), that focuses on the Mandalorian culture (very nerdy, and niche), and an alien baby. Look at The Crown, a show centered around a dramatized variant of the British Royal Family... seriously? How the fk did that get globally popular?
simple question for me is - what metric have they been tasked with moving? is it prime retention or engagement on prime video
Netflix also wastes a lot of money but at least they deliver cultural hits every single year. Prime can definitely use a change of leadership
Even if it's performing at a loss, it's powerful horizontal scaling, a catalyst for bringing in more customers even if it does so indirectly, and all of that in a relatively small time frame. A lot of people call this "blitzscaling". You spend massive amounts of money, even while operating at a loss, to get as big as you can as fast as possible. Patrick Boyle did a dive into blitzscaling, which I think is worth checking out. They seem to have lots of faith in their expansions, which they have the capital reserves to back up.
I'm not an amazon prime subscriber, nor an investor, but looking from afar, I think they'll do just fine.
The only problem is most people don't realize they get it for free. Same with free cloud storage.
Exactly, and people get prime for their shopping, not for their videos streaming service. PV is almost a loss leader to retain customers, not as a new subscriber driver. They would probably get the same result spending 20% less.
Try not to be a braindead streaming platform challenge (100% impossible)
I enjoy the mature content on prime such as the boys, hunter etc. I couldn't care less subs numbers that's for braindead sheep.
I have been a long time Amazon Prime and by extension Prime Video Member, its a great service. There are great shows on Prime Video, but, finding them is often a challenge. I often get recommended content I have already watched, rather than anything new. I also think while they spend big on talent and production, I find I often don't hear about Amazon shows until well after they are out. I did get an Amazon parcel that had some Rings of Power themed tape on, that was somewhat exciting.
Fundamentally every show I have watched on Amazon I have heard of via word of mouth and as a lot of their content seems "unexciting" only the cream of the crop ever seems to get discussion.
Great insight, keep these videos up!!
Rings of Power was an absolute joke and just managed to enrage LOTR fans and bore non fans to death
For me what makes Netflix great is their willingness to do things outside of the box. Such as Arcane and the Witcher (at least season 1) that are willing to look at the complexities of life. And of course their decision to buy a lot of foreign series (ie. Money Heist).
I have experience in content IP acquisition in Asia and since early this year, Amazon studio had been commissioning South East Asian local producers to start developing titles and producing content for each respective countries. Their titles had been interesting as some of them are not huge budgeted series with well known IP's but more of a low budgeted format expansion or local version of existing IP's. Having to face stiff competition from Netflix's Korean titles and Disney's kids animation, in that context, personally I'm not convenience with this particular strategy.
Here are the issues:
- bad and slow interface
- free shows buried with paid shows
"Anyway, the TLDR here" HE SAID IT! HE FINALLY SAID THE THING! It took literal years but we got there ladies and gents, congratulations to you all for your perseverance
we can finally unsubscribe
They said it many times
A common pattern that I realised about these Tech giants is that they having an exponentially tremendous amount of growth, popularity and profit but once they're at the peaks, it's hard for them sustaining the success, afterwards going on flat (if they got lucky) or else straight up downhills.
Weirdly enough for me to think that RUclips was never actually being dethroned as the most and successful steaming platform. Would probably be immortalise.
Anyone remember Google Stadia? No? Probably because all they ever found to put on the platform was 5 year old games and clear first tries at game development. Silicon Valley can clearly do the IT. But it's almost as if they refuse to learn any other business other than growing big platfroms quickly. No, creative success will not come automatically if you build it. You need to make people want to use your platform, both to consume and produce content. That's why I'm still on Utube and many others are too. It has the largest community of creators, no matter how much the algorithm screws them over there still posting here for want of better choices to grow big enough to leave for good.
@@nomobobby yeah indeed. Maybe in this case (the video),, Jeff should hire someone like Susan Wojcicki to run it. But Nahhhh... Even so, it's too late into the game and probably no turnarounds to be seen with the Prime.
I don't sign up for Amazon Prime because the USPS won't deliver packages my apartment building. All they ever do is leave a note saying "We tried to deliver your package but no one was home." That's a lot easier than carrying packages around through the day.
I hate Amazon and Hulu for the same reason. The way that they have set up their search function feels dishonest to me. They mix free content with show's/movie's that you need to rent/buy. Sometimes "stream for free" and rent/buy" are both an option. In that situation the search engine will show you the rent/buy first and hide the free option in a sea of results that have a similar name.
Prime example of money can't buy taste.
More like money can't buy success. There are some decent gems on Prime but too few compared to other services.
I got gifted Prime for three months, i was disappointed by seeing ads run on it. Apparently they were testing it for content suggestions of otger shows.
Still meant a subscription service sold to be ad free had about a minute of trailers before each episode. Worse in my case it was the same trailer every time.
Prime’s biggest issue is that you still have to pay for a lot of the content. That’s a strange model.
Netflix keeps raising prices and I keep paying while any other service raíces prices CANCELLED
Prime is much better when it comes to licensed content (in the UK at least). There’s a lot of decent older movies in rotation and some big newer titles too. It’s real strength imo is all of the indie stuff on there, it’s mostly hidden but once you start digging into it the algorithm will throw loads more at you.
If they had done a version of Rings of Power that wasn't actively hostile to the material, they'd be a lot more popular.
I'm also done with 90% of the prime video content that interested me. I'm at the point where i'm rotating services now. I am willing to budget $30 per month on streaming. And I don't order that much from Amazon *AND* their "Prime free shipping" is now often the same as the other vendors cost of product + shipping. I.e. the Prime "free" shipping is a scam for many products.
I have no interested in dystopic shows. I have no interest in misandryst shows. I have no interest in shows where hostile adapters skin an existing I.P. over crap.
I also *hate* browsing for a show or movie and getting to it and only then do I find out it's $3 per episode. Their interface is actively miserable to use.
Speaking of stars, they also trusted Jeremy Clarkson not to get into massive trouble again
If they strip away all these extra "perks" that I don't need, maybe they can lower their subscription fee a lot
Spent half an hour browsing through videos on Prime only to come back to RUclips and see this 🤦🏾♂️
Amazon needs to make their content easier to find. They have an abundance of good shows but it's difficult to "stumble " on them.
Went back to binge the entire first season of The Moth Effect. Good stuff!
IMO the biggest issue for all of the streaming services seems to be that there just isn't enough revenue available to support the model. Back in the 'golden age' of Netflix the model could kind of work because everyone was willing to play nice with receiving a small stipend for their old shows.
It was a way to make a little extra revenue on IPs that there already past their prime, as it were.
But now everyone is competing against one another, and has to create new . . . content . . . (man I hate that word) . . . And that's much MUCH pricier than just hosting old shows and movies. And now all of us consumers have this weird binging addiction.
Should poll on whether ppl prefer to pay monthly or annual for streaming.
Amazon used to offer annual until.....?
Amazon Music Unlimited is not included in the price FYI, that's a different tier. (Oh and give the Terminal List the 3 episode rule, it surprised me no end)
I enjoy Amazon Prime. Yes, they might not have a massive impact or blockbusters, but they have, in Germany at least, a very good backlog of, in american terms, "basic cable shows"(including the most popular US sitcoms) and movies. Prime Video is actually the only streaming service I watch movies on regularily. There are a lot of important films from film history. I also have the Mubi addon, which, for a fee that combined with the Prime cost is still cheaper than the mid-tier Netflix subscription, provides me with amazing movies. And not to forget, the impact of their comedic programmes, including shows like Ms Maisel, Fleabag and of course LOL actually is actually quite significant.
Prime Video is one of the factors why I continue to keep my Prime subscription. I don’t buy from Amazon that frequently anymore, so access to some of the better shows on Prime is really the main thing keeping me subscribed.
Name three
@@homolupus1 well besides the Rings of Power that was discussed in this video, here are a few shows I have enjoyed:
The Boys
Grand Tour
Invincible
The Expanse
The Man in the High Castle
Marvelous Mrs Maisel
@@homolupus1 crickets…
Rings of Power absolutely sucks
I would say that Rings of Power didn't have a 'muted' response, but a kind of flaming trash-fire response. It is a disgrace to Tolkien's world, there's a reason they had to fire Tom Shippy, the most well-regarded Tolkien expert, in order to release the show.
It is the same kind of insanity that Amazon Prime's Wheel of Time was. They both express a complete contempt for the source material, not a mere misunderstanding.
The well-known mismanagement and awful content require them to pay double to triple to get people to work there. This isn't just the creatives, it is also set designers and others.
Agreed. The reason I ignore prime video is because of the confusing interface mixing paid and included content. They should have a simplified start menu that gives you 2 options of prime videos or additional cost videos then when you get into prime then you know everything you see you can watch but they also have the option of buying content separately. I would certainly use more if this really simple change was made.
I didn't want to watch Amazon's Rings show because it's not based on an actual book written by J.R.R. Tolkien; am not interested in a fanfic version.
I watched Amazon's Rings, and I've read the Silmarillion. The broad strokes do match up though they added some weird ideas too. Númenor was well done. I enjoyed the last half of Amazon's Rings more than the first half. It was better than the Hobbit which was directly linked to the book...though both extrapolated way too much.
@@nathanbanks2354 I have to disagree with RoP being better than the Hobbit. The Hobbit was a lighthearted story that did expand on what was written in the books, but didn't change things too much. RoP on the other hand is just wrong.
When the elven ship arrived at Valinor and instead of finding an actual island they arrived at some weird portal, I knew that no one on their set ever read the Silmarillion. In Tolkien's world, the world was flat with a clear end to it and Valinor, the land of the Ainur, was part of it. Only when the Numenorians sailed their ships to Valinor (something that was only possible because Valinor was physically there in their world), did Eru Illúvatar bend the world, so no matter how far you went, you'd always circle back to where you started, and removed Valinor from the world to exist separately. So Valinor being behind some glowing portal despite Numenor being well and above the waves, was just wrong. I stopped watching shortly after that episode, but I hear they did another major screw up with the elven rings.
The Hobbit might not be good from a cinematographic point of view, I can't really judge that (I had fun watching the movies), but at least they got the major story-points right. Which is not something I can say about RoP.
@@BunjiKugashira42 I think RoP is set after Illúvatar bent the world (with flashbacks to earlier) and I liked the way they did the elven rings. The ring bearers who forged the rings didn't seem to be as noble as I expected, they knew leaders instead of leading themselves, but this makes sense because they didn't have their rings yet. I kept waiting for Sauron to show up to help forge the ring which would follow the book. Like I said, I liked the last half of RoP more than the first. It certainly had a slow start.
The Hobbit had more of a story to build on since the Silmarillion spans millennia instead of years. I once watched a version that was cut down from three movies to one three hour movie which was pretty good. Perhaps my judgement is clouded because I had moderately high expectations for the Hobbit after watching Jackson's LoTR whereas I had relatively low expectations for RoP.
@@nathanbanks2354 Numenor sank during the world bending, so RoP definitely plays before that event. The Numenorians attacking Valinor was the whole reason for the world bending.
As for the rings: In the Silmarillion the three elven rings were forged by Celebrimbor alone. Sauron, who went by the name Annatar at the time, never touched those, which explains why they didn't corrupt their wearers like the human rings did. The elven rings were forged last, after the other 16 rings and after Annatar was revealed to be Sauron. That's why the elves kept the whole thing secret.
I and my family have read the wheel of time books many, many times. This series has brought our family closer together and has given us joy especially during hard times. We are grateful to be huge fans of the books.
We are also all incredibly sad about the way Amazon has disrespected the story with their tv adaption. I can’t understand for the life of me, why Robert Jordan’s incredibly strong widow, Herriot McDougall would give her approval to the truly awful changes to the story Amazon has made. I will not be watching season 2 and I hope that HBO will pick it up in the future. At least as long as D & D don’t get their hands on the project…. 😢
Can't understand why? I can. It's called MONEY. If people like the story or find an interest in the idea from the series, once they hear the book is 10x better, they'll more than likely go purchase the book (physical, ebook, or audio)
They get paid twice
The only reason AP has such high subscriber numbers is that you are *forced* to buy it if you want the Prime delivery benefits. As with Prime included books, and music, every time I look at something I might want, it wants me to pay, either for the item, or an additional subscription.
Amazon's adaptation of Man in The High Castle was so well done. So well done 👍
Except for that obviously rushed, idiotic, confusing ending. What a disservice to an overall great and terrifying series!
@@Jamietheroadrunner No doubt. Agreed 👍
Nowdays whenever I launch the app, I can't tell what's on Prime and what is on extra service they ask money for. It got worst and worst year after year
The boys is easily the best show on Amazon prime I really hope they stay successful long enough to finish that show out correctly
I think you have to acknowledge the SPACEBALLS merchandising factor for Amazon & Disney. Netflix and HBO don't have the infrastructure to profit from merchandising related to their content like the other two streaming giants. So when Rings of Power or [Insert Princess Movie] is declared a success, it may be because of items they plan to sell from it more than the # of views.
which one of the major streaming services will be the first to go under and which one of the small streaming services will be the first to go under (if it hasn't done it already?)
You didn't even mention just how awful their apps and UX are. All Amazon apps look and feel like those poorly made apps from 2011.
Prime employees thinking that "Reacher" and "Jack Ryan" are boring shows? That would explain a lot why they have hard times.
there are plenty good shows on prime video. The Consultant, Hannah, Reacher, the Boys, Jack Ryan and Picard are excellent.
Picard is a Paramount+ show. It’s not free on Prime. And there lies the problem: most of Prime’s shows u have to pay extra for. Not the case for HBO and Disney.
@@Jamietheroadrunner oh i see. didnt even know you could watch some of the content for free.
The biggest problem with Amazon prime is that you find a lot of unfree content.
As a consumer I’m thinking like if I pay for the service, why should I pay extra for another movie?
Prime Video is essentially free, bundled with the other services.
Problems:
- Original content is not very interesting. I can't think of any offhand,
- Biggest, widest audience leads to the lowest common denominator a.k.a. drivel,
- Prices to buy or rent movies or shows are too high. $19.99 for a movie you might watch 3 times over the next 5 years? DVD format is often half that price. $1.99 per episode for series or a high full season cost? Really? Probably make more by cutting price in half.
Some amazing shows I like on Prime Video:
The Boys
Invincible
Legend of Vox Machina
Good Omens
The Tick
Swarm
What they did with Lord of the Rings is beyond Forgiveness.
Aswr😂
Their app is a bit rubbish, they stuffed content to buy/rent, content with ads, and content with no ads together and now no easy way / no obvious way, to search excluding content you don't want included. For example I may want only included prime content without ads - now they've removed that search ability, so a lot of the time I just ignore Prime Video.
As an Amazon shareholder, I want the entire Prime Video leadership to be fired.
I cannot understand how they can f* up that much and keep their job!
Reference, i.e see bud lite vp of marketing; or Kathleen Kennedy over at disney. Failure seems to be excused these days. Likely brought to you, by the everybody wins a trophy crowd.