Disney+ Drops 1.3 Million Subscribers Amid Price Hike, Streaming Loss Shrinks by $300 Million::Disney+ lost 1.3 million subscribers in the final quarter of 2023 amid a hefty price hike that went into effect last fall

    • andrew@lemmy.stuart.fun
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      11 months ago

      Not sure where the positive news is, unless you’re a Disney shareholder. They dropped subscribers and are now losing less money. They care about the money, not really the subscribers. This pattern will likely continue.

      • Oderus@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Their greed backfired and they lost money as a result. Music to my ears. Arrr.

        • PorkSoda@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          The wording is confusing but they are making more money from the price hike. They were losing money, they are now losing less money.

          Streaming Loss Shrinks by $300 Million

          • InfiniteGlitch@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            11 months ago

            As a non-native English speaker, I thought the same exact thing. That they lost revenue of 300M.

            So unfortunately they are gaining revenue? I wish more people would get into Piracy honestly.

            • Petter1@lemm.ee
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              11 months ago

              Thing is, if more people go pirate stuff, there are less people financing the movie production, and thus, they have pay more In theory, of course, we don’t know what pile of coins goes to manager, CEO, similar for no reason high paid jobs.

        • andrew@lemmy.stuart.fun
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          11 months ago

          Unfortunately, no. They were already losing lots of money. They are now losing less money than they were before even after people left. Which is generally what happens if you’re losing money for every subscriber and then subscribers leave.

          • andallthat@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            “see this chart here? We lose money for every subscriber! We’ll never make any money until we get rid of all of theml”

          • Cringe2793@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            How do you lose money per subscriber? Surely the subscription fee each subscriber pays is enough to offset the server, labor, etc costs, right?

            • Jojo@lemm.ee
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              11 months ago

              By making up more costs.

              More seriously, by evaluating what you could be making by letting someone else run the streaming service and pay you for the rights, instead. It’s still a pretty imaginary number, but it does come from something real.

              • Jojo@lemm.ee
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                11 months ago

                Also, for a business other than Disney, licensing fees for the content they show can be a pretty large cost that needs a lot of subscribers to offset.

  • Lutra@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Do they mean 1.3 Million subscribers dropped Disney+ ?

    If that’s what they meant, english would actually let them say that.

    • EatATaco@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      I can be pretty pedantic, but that seemed clear to me. Thinking about it, I regularly here “Disney has x subscribers” and much less frequently they “x people subscribe to Disney.” So following that convention, saying that Disney has dropped subscribers makes perfect sense.

    • Lutra@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      ( no english major here, by far)

      but I suspect my qualm is: which entity is the actor and which is the acted upon.

      Disney did not act to remove the subscribers, but rather the opposite, the subscribers acted to drop Disney.

      One might extrapolate that Disney’s previous actions directly lead to the event.

      Does that stand to reason?

  • paddirn@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    I wouldn’t have necessarily minded a price hike, at least not enough to drop D+ over it. It was the shitty writing that made me drop it, specifically Secret Invasion. That was the shitshow that made me go, “I’m done being angry at stupid, lazy-ass writing, I’m walking away.” And I’ve been fine. I haven’t even felt the need to pirate anything, I just don’t care anymore at this point.

    • lepinkainen@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      They killed fucking Maria Hill, and not even in an epic way. Just poof, dead.

      Unforgivable.

    • Microplasticbrain@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      I couldn’t even make it through the first 15 minutes. After kenobi im just not investing time in a whole season for a few moments of cool shit.

      • paddirn@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        I would obviously prefer not to, but if it was delivering a quality product that I liked I might. Prices go up all the time, sometimes I’ll pay, sometimes not, it just depends. With D+ though, I really wasn’t using it for anything in their extensive library, it was really just the new shows coming out. With the quality being as bad as it’s been from the get-go, I was just tired of the Marvel/Star Wars writers treating their audience like they’re idiots. It was frustrating going from one contrived scene to the next with the barest of logic applied to anything, things only happening just to get to the next scene, without any regard for what would actually make sense for the characters. The constant character assassination and cheapening of their franchises.

    • ohlaph@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Yeah, Dianey+ just isn’t worth it unless you uave children these days.

  • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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    11 months ago

    I can hear the groans and cries on the docks … YAHHARR!! ARGGGGG!! AYE MATIES!!! YAHAAR!!! YAHAR!!! ARGGGGHH!!! YAHAAR!!!

  • thesmokingman@programming.dev
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    11 months ago

    I’ve shared it with my very young nieces and nephews for a few years. We do Simpsons and Star Wars, they do everything else. Now that Disney is pulling a Netflix, I don’t see a reason to double my cost for probably less viewing. For the price of a year’s sub, I can get a lot of movies or box sets. Over the years, I can get even more and never worry about losing access. Assuming Disney continues to raise prices, I can probably buy more and more for the sub price (although buying power will also drop). I can never share my access with my family any more. I can share box sets. Guess which one makes my nieces and nephews happy when they come visit.

  • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    They said it themselves, “yo-ho, altogether, hoist the colors high.”

  • dunestorm@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    When greed backfires it’s glorious! Plus the more streaming services pop up, the more people will pirate; we’ve regressed back into the cable TV era all because the suits are greedy bastards and deserve to lose every subscriber.

    • Pipoca@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Disney+ lost 1.3 million subscribers in the final quarter of 2023 amid a hefty price hike that went into effect last fall, but managed to narrow its streaming business’ losses by $300 million during the October-December period.

      That doesn’t really sound like it backfired to me. They lost subscribers but made more money.

        • Pipoca@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Suppose one year you spend $60k, but only earned $50k. You lost $10k.

          The next year, you spend $57k, and earned $53k. You lost $4k, and your losses narrowed by $6k.

  • gnygnygny@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    I am one if the 1.3 M. I not gonna pay 80 bucks per year to watch Grogu.

  • TwattyMcTwatterson@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    That’s funny, I dropped them last week right before they announced the price hike because I own everything I want to watch and now that I have my OTA DVR set up I don’t need Hulu so I said “see ya round like a big old doughnut.”

  • Veneroso@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    It’s getting ridiculous. I am starting to consider dropping Prime. I don’t need free shipping that bad and I don’t even watch anything on it anymore. And when I do want to watch something I have to watch ads!? Yeah…

    Yarrr me hearties! It be time to raise the Jolly Rodger!

  • runjun@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    I was paying for a year at a pop. After the price hike, I was going to cancel entirely. It just happened to coincide with the shitty Disney/hulu ad price. Which got my kids off my back for not having it and it’s only like 36 bucks for the year. If I feel inclined to watch something on those two then I watch on desktop and ad block the ads.

  • archomrade [he/him]@midwest.social
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    11 months ago

    I’m calling it now:

    Eventually these streamers are going to run out of runway, and they’re already placing the blame on piracy. They’re going to start pushing for more intense legal action against piracy and self-hosted options. Likely they’ll push for broader enforcement of copyright and criminal charges, but i think they’ll also litigate against plex and other self-hosted software and services as enabling/dealing in pirated content. Worst-case is that they start placing restrictions on VPN’s and proxies, and they’ll maybe couch it in a ‘concern for national security’. FOSS has been having a moment the last couple years, but I’m very nervous about the attention their attracting.

    I’m not sure what this will look like, but Netflix and others have already started putting out foreboding OP eds and statements addressing the market impact of pirating, and the digital media market sector is simply too big for legislators to ignore. The more companies like Disney and Netflix take on losses, the more pressure will be placed on legislators to act.

  • MajorHavoc@programming.dev
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    11 months ago

    I’m sure the strength of Disney’s back catalog will more than make up for picking fights with the talent that create their new content while simultaneously breaking their mobile app experience with DRM and buggy software that drives their paying customers to learn about piracy.