Prime increase!

[kagharaht]

I’m not sure about continuing. Have to re-asses the benefits of this.

An update on Prime Video

Prime began with a revolutionary premise - to deliver 1 million items fast and free directly to your doorstep.

www.aboutamazon.co.uk

 

[AlmightyKang]

Yeah screw it. I just moved from the normal mortal account to the student plan which is only £4.49 a month. So the last three deliveries were stolen, one by the driver who never deposited it in the pick up box leading to three days of arguing with them because they didn't believe they hired a thief or incompetent and now they're shovelling ads down my throat on Prime.

Bye!

 

[Apple_Robert]

I ditched Prime long ago and still get packages as quickly as someone on Prime. Paying for Prime video doesn’t interest me. I have about 260 shows on my server to keep me busy with no ads.

 

[JamesMay82]

they‘ve destroyed physical media and now they increase the pricing on streaming! What a surprise, they are an industry destroying business! They did it here in the UK when they destroyed play.com.. i can’t stand them.

 

[zobby]

I thought prime was good value when they had tennis coverage. Now that’s gone I struggle to justify it. Probably a good thing.

 

[AlmightyKang]

they‘ve destroyed physical media and now they increase the pricing on streaming! What a surprise, they are an industry destroying business! They did it here in the UK when they destroyed play.com.. i can’t stand them.

I don't think physical media was ever a good idea, just a necessary thing until we built the infrastructure for distributing content. It's large, expensive, an environmental disaster due to the transit and production requirements and inconvenient. Also when you lend it to people they never give it back.

The equation is always

gain = effort / cost

What is happening here is that the cost is increasing so the overall gain is reduced.

This is a bad move because the other market they are competing against has only a small amount of effort and a lot less cost.

 

[scubachap]

I guess it was inevitable, we all knew it was going to happen eventually - Cory Doctorow nailed it in his essay ******tification which most of us have probably read but it's linked if you haven't.

I'll continue for a while as Prime enables me to get stuff to my elderly mother remotely really easily but if it wasn't for that I'd probably cancel. For me it's probably not worth it anymore as Prime Video increasingly now seems now to resemble the back end of the old video store with all the heavily discounted low budget straight to video rentals were piled up. (They probably blew the budgets on the abortion that was Rings of Power) and Amazon itself seems to have become a knock off Chinese tat jumble (yard?) sale.

 

[JamesMay82]

I don't think physical media was ever a good idea, just a necessary thing until we built the infrastructure for distributing content. It's large, expensive, an environmental disaster due to the transit and production requirements and inconvenient. Also when you lend it to people they never give it back.

The equation is always

gain = effort / cost

What is happening here is that the cost is increasing so the overall gain is reduced.

This is a bad move because the other market they are competing against has only a small amount of effort and a lot less cost.

I disagree and so would millions of other people as the world is full of collectors but split across different formats. Originally Betamax, vhs, laser to dvd, blu ray and now streaming.

People like the idea of owning their libraries and more so for music as i think music is more personal to people and you listen to it more than once.

My point was that Amazon have devalued the physical media product through heavy discounting and there cheap prime video which has 1000’s of music and video shops out of business and even some big major retailers and now the competition is gone they are raising their prices Which is now hurting the consumer. It’s been their business model in other categories as well.

You make a good point about the environmental factor of physical but then they say streaming uses a lot of energy as well and could be equally as bad in the long run due to all the data centres etc. I suppose time will tell on this point.

 

[AlmightyKang]

I disagree and so would millions of other people as the world is full of collectors but split across different formats. Originally Betamax, vhs, laser to dvd, blu ray and now streaming.

People like the idea of owning their libraries and more so for music as i think music is more personal to people and you listen to it more than once.

My point was that Amazon have devalued the physical media product through heavy discounting and there cheap prime video which has 1000’s of music and video shops out of business and even some big major retailers and now the competition is gone they are raising their prices Which is now hurting the consumer. It’s been their business model in other categories as well.

You make a good point about the environmental factor of physical but then they say streaming uses a lot of energy as well and could be equally as bad in the long run due to all the data centres etc. I suppose time will tell on this point.

You can still own your digital music. That's more where I'd go myself. Despite that I am a lazy Apple Music user. The problem with having physical media has always been quite large for me. At one point I had about 500 records, 800 CDs and 300 DVDs. Not a huge collection but a significant one. The end game was that I found some serious disadvantages to doing this. Firstly finding recordings and actually obtaining them was a costly exercise both in time and in expenditure especially with the somewhat scarcity of particular pieces. The storage and maintenance and moving it was quite difficult (I moved house a couple of times) and when it came to having kids, the complexity of sharing it was multiplied. Eventually the collecting and maintenance became a net loss to the thing I really dented wanted to do which was listen to it. Also due to the media types, particularly when it comes to efficiency, I probably only listened to 10% of the collection right down in some cases to 1 track on a CD of 15 tracks.

As for the value, the medium has no value, only the data on it. The value of the medium was scarcity and control. Streaming merely broke scarcity. I can now stream and cache "high value" music I could not access before because the scarcity is gone. That's not unique to Amazon.

So I was in Central Asia for 2 weeks recently and I had my entire library with me, and only the focused bits of media I actually wanted to listen to.

Streaming has an extremely low energy cost. At rest it requires no energy. During transit, even a 4k stream is insignificant these days. Compare to the distribution of a physical CD to a single person, just the last mile energy cost of getting it to your door is higher. Notably as well the data centre single budgetary point is power so they optimise everything to extreme levels.

I get it but it's a thing of the past. An SSD filled with FLAC files is a good middle point.

 

[oneMadRssn]

My rule: Either it's ad-free, or it has ads and it's free. *except for live sports.

 

[JamesMay82]

You can still own your digital music. That's more where I'd go myself. Despite that I am a lazy Apple Music user. The problem with having physical media has always been quite large for me. At one point I had about 500 records, 800 CDs and 300 DVDs. Not a huge collection but a significant one. The end game was that I found some serious disadvantages to doing this. Firstly finding recordings and actually obtaining them was a costly exercise both in time and in expenditure especially with the somewhat scarcity of particular pieces. The storage and maintenance and moving it was quite difficult (I moved house a couple of times) and when it came to having kids, the complexity of sharing it was multiplied. Eventually the collecting and maintenance became a net loss to the thing I really dented wanted to do which was listen to it. Also due to the media types, particularly when it comes to efficiency, I probably only listened to 10% of the collection right down in some cases to 1 track on a CD of 15 tracks.

As for the value, the medium has no value, only the data on it. The value of the medium was scarcity and control. Streaming merely broke scarcity. I can now stream and cache "high value" music I could not access before because the scarcity is gone. That's not unique to Amazon.

So I was in Central Asia for 2 weeks recently and I had my entire library with me, and only the focused bits of media I actually wanted to listen to.

Streaming has an extremely low energy cost. At rest it requires no energy. During transit, even a 4k stream is insignificant these days. Compare to the distribution of a physical CD to a single person, just the last mile energy cost of getting it to your door is higher. Notably as well the data centre single budgetary point is power so they optimise everything to extreme levels.

I get it but it's a thing of the past. An SSD filled with FLAC files is a good middle point.

you have a bigger physical collection than me.. how were you able to walk away and abandon it when you've spent thousands of dollars curating that collection? I find that the hardest thing about streaming because I find it wasteful walking away from my past purchases.

just found this article that's interesting..

The environmental impact of music: digital, records, CDs analysed

Some of our favourite music formats might not be as environmentally friendly as we think.

theconversation.com

 

[AlmightyKang]

you have a bigger physical collection than me.. how were you able to walk away and abandon it when you've spent thousands of dollars curating that collection? I find that the hardest thing about streaming because I find it wasteful walking away from my past purchases.

just found this article that's interesting..

The environmental impact of music: digital, records, CDs analysed

Some of our favourite music formats might not be as environmentally friendly as we think.

theconversation.com

Very easily. I literally picked out all the high value ones, sold them on eBay for a small fortune and sold the rest as a mixed lot, for quite a bit of money too. Then buggered off on holiday for 2 weeks with the money!

As for the environmental impact article, one of the quoted bits of information is completely absurd

"streaming an album over the internet more than 27 times will likely use more energy than it takes to produce and manufacture the same CD"

No one streams the same album 27 times. They download it once and it's cached on the most amazingly energy efficient computing devices we have produced as a species!

 

[ThrowerGB]

I don't think physical media was ever a good idea, just a necessary thing until we built the infrastructure for distributing content. It's large, expensive, an environmental disaster due to the transit and production requirements and inconvenient. Also when you lend it to people they never give it back.

The equation is always

gain = effort / cost

What is happening here is that the cost is increasing so the overall gain is reduced.

This is a bad move because the other market they are competing against has only a small amount of effort and a lot less cost.

When doing these sorts of cost comparisons, you've got to make sure it's apples to apples. A good way to do this is to calculate the cost to you. For example, for stuff delivered by internet, you have to include more than just the obvious cost like the cost of the streaming service or the cost of the movie or song rental or purchase price, but also things you pay for directly or indirectly, like the cost of the equipment (infrastructure) you have to have to make it work. i.e., internet usage cost, the internet connection and modem, a router, cables and possibly an Apple or Hulu TV etc device. Then there's the cost of the electricity you use, whether you pay the real cost of it (it might be subsidized i.e., it has to be paid for by someone.) Then there's things like the impact on health/environment of generating and delivering the electricity., etc, etc. It's a long list that people argue about costs that should or shouldn't be included, like the cost of waste disposal when you throw out some old hardware and replace it with new.
There a similar type of exercise in coming up with a real cost for DVDs.
But in the end, your points about convenience, etc might outweigh monetary costs in any comprehensive comparison.

 

[Dc2006ster]

I cancelled. We rarely use the video, music etc and get get free shipping if we order more than $35 of stuff So no real value for us. It was something we were thinking to do anyway and this cash grab by a very rich company was the tipping point.

 

[Le Big Mac]

If I cancel now, I keep the benefits of Prime until my one year is up, right? (it renews in April some time).

 

[stocklen]

I’m not sure about continuing. Have to re-asses the benefits of this.

An update on Prime Video

Prime began with a revolutionary premise - to deliver 1 million items fast and free directly to your doorstep.

www.aboutamazon.co.uk

Is this in the right forum?

not sure what its got to do with Apple TV specifically - its happening across the board.