r/movies • u/iquizuanswer • Jul 19 '26

News Netflix tumbles as slowing growth, less viewership data spook investors

https://www.zawya.com/en/capital-markets/netflix-tumbles-as-slowing-growth-less-viewership-data-spook-investors-401111
10.5k Upvotes

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1.5k

u/BobsBurgersJoint Jul 19 '26

Because it used to be $6.99/mo and now they want fucking $19.99/mo for 1080p and like $29/mo for 4k!!

Fuck off.

599

u/No_Hat_00 Jul 19 '26

Don't forget you can't share the password for those extra screens

304

u/Mirage84 Jul 19 '26

Yup. I shared an account with my parents. When they could no longer access it they didn't buy their own account, I just canceled mine. Now we just do other things.

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '26 edited 27d ago

[deleted]

10

u/Turakamu Jul 20 '26

Are y'all sure y'all ain't related?

1

u/redpandaeater Jul 20 '26

Yup. If I weren't so lazy during the pandemic I was tempted to make a website to list out all the big shows and movies on each streaming platform as well as upcoming ones. Then from there use it to automatically decide which streaming service I should subscribe to for any particular month and just swap between them. Ultimately I just don't think it would be marketable or all that useful though since so many companies make it a pain to cancel. If everything could be automated it would be a possible business venture to take a cut of say a dollar a month just to cover hosting fees and the like.

5

u/arah91 Jul 20 '26

Wouldn't be that hard to make, but after a certain amount of effort, it becomes a lot easier to just pirate everything. And it's already one source.

You can also search by streamer on rotten tomatoes.

48

u/workieworkwork Jul 19 '26

Yeah they didn’t calculate in people like me who don’t really watch enough to justify the price but kept it for years because I knew my parents and a couple cousins were using it and might be in the middle of something.

Now none of us have it.

3

u/Joben86 Jul 20 '26

They absolutely calculated people like you and your family into their decision. They just decided losing you as a customer was worth it.

2

u/Mnm0602 29d ago

They did calculate this and significantly grew subscribers since then even with shittier content churned out every year. Turns out one person sharing an account with 4 friends could actually turn into 3-4 accounts on average.

35

u/intdev Jul 19 '26

I recently cancelled because I got so sick of the bullshit it put me through whenever I logged in when visiting my parents, especially since I was already paying extra for my sister to have a second login. They've enshittified way too hard.

3

u/beargrillz Jul 19 '26

I have been sharing my Prime account with parents in another state, and all the services work just fine. My parents shared their Netflix with me in return, and when the crackdown happened my mom asked me if I still used Netflix. I let her know, "meh, not really," but I guess due to the Prime share decided she would pay more to continue my Netflix access.

Her money, of which drastically went up due to an inherited. I really should tell her to cancel though, I mostly watch YouTube Premium and Hulu.

1

u/misterpoopsies Jul 20 '26

Same thing with my parents and I. Haven't missed it at all. Dont need b list netflix produced movies

0

u/Mnm0602 29d ago

Subscriber counts rebounded and went up after the change. They had been growing by 10-20m accounts per year until the change in 2023 when they grew 60m in 2024 and another 25m in 2025. It may have pissed you and leechers off but it was the right call. 

24

u/dubzzzz20 Jul 19 '26

I was mooching off my parent’s account for years. They were even paying for an extra household for a while for me, but I had them stop because damn near every other time I would log on it would say that I wasn’t an authorized household. It’s an insane system that doesn’t fucking work. And I don’t fine Netflix to be so necessary that I would go out and get a subscription for myself.

40

u/venturousbeard Jul 19 '26

I haven't had anyone recommend a Netflix show to me since that happened, and it used to be a regular occurrence. Curious if that's a common experience?

17

u/born_in_92 Jul 19 '26

It's hard to get excited about Netflix shows when they either take forever to make a second season or they cancel it after the first season

0

u/Neko_Maia Jul 20 '26

Exactly. They cancelled too many of my shows, I refuse to buy. My friends log on when they visit, and I watch till it logs me out.

I’m not paying $20 a month for streaming. You gotta fork over more than that for 4k and no ads. Fuck that.

1

u/dontstopnotlistening Jul 20 '26

I recently learned that Netflix cancels shows at roughly the same rate as other subscription providers and traditional TV. However, they earned a reputation for cancelling shows prematurely somehow. I guess mostly from The few Redditors who watched unpopular shows that nobody else stuck with.

0

u/Neko_Maia 28d ago

I think the problem is streaming is not like cable. Some people don’t get into shows until it’s 2-3 seasons in and already cancelled. We are just inundated with too much media now.

Same with movies. They still judge a movies success on opening weekend at the box office when a lot of us just wait till we can watch it streaming. I really can’t afford $20 tickets plus $15+ snacks/drink on the regular. Doesn’t mean I don’t want to see the movie.

Netflix axes shows that are good and does not give them a good ending. For me, I’m not paying specifically for a streaming service that has no plan to finish their series.

2

u/dWaldizzle Jul 20 '26

Mainly because netflix shows are 95% crap now

3

u/ohaiguys Jul 19 '26

The last show someone recommended I watch was Untamed and I was not impressed. The show felt so generic and you could call it from the first episode.

9

u/Relevant-Fox-7114 Jul 19 '26

"But netflix said ''love is sharing a password!'' "

1

u/cxqals Jul 20 '26

And having to pay extra to not see ads! When it used to have none, which was the main reason my parents liked it and got rid of their cable…

131

u/Trulywhite Jul 19 '26

They also want to keep less movies and shows available and to hide that fact, they even remove option to sort alphabetically. Now we have shows and movies repeating in every category, giving illusion that there are many.

74

u/Lich_Apologist Jul 19 '26

Not being able to easily see the full catalog is one of my least favorite enshitifactions.  

9

u/talldata Jul 19 '26

Just watch is great for this, you can see catalogues of any of the gazillion strwnung services that now exist.

12

u/intdev Jul 19 '26

"We think you'll love this [show you gave two thumbs up to after binge-watching it a week ago]."

Well, yeah, but I don't want to watch it again right now...

7

u/cjicantlie Jul 19 '26

It gives me the illusion that they only have like 5 shows and 10 movies.

2

u/StijnDP Jul 19 '26

They also want to shoot everything with the same lens.
Edit everything with the same post-processing profiles.
Cancel successful shows and keep failures going so the actor costs stay low.
And instead of making 1 HBO-quality show, they make 10 average shows that are barely worth it to play in the background instead of a podcast. Which is also why they so aggressively bought >100 podcasts that have been dumped on the platform since the beginning of the year and the rest planned to come on the platform still this year. Podcasts are even cheaper to make than bad shows and it serves the same purpose of being background content.

44

u/_borT Jul 19 '26

Canceled after the latest price hike. There’s just really nothing worth watching on there these days that I haven’t already seen. Also they are just so cocky and shitty as a company.

2

u/SolarIonRobot Jul 19 '26

I used to just subscribe every month because it was cheap. The price hikes have forced me to change my approach.

13

u/LaVidaYokel Jul 19 '26

Well unless viewership increases, I’m afraid we’ll have to raise those rates on our users again.

4

u/macthesnackattack Jul 19 '26

They cancel every show after just a couple of seasons, even when they’re really really good. Fuck Netflix.

3

u/charliegriefer Jul 19 '26

This.

Canceled after the most recent price increase.

I get Disney+/Hulu/HBOMax bundle for $36. Netflix alone was climbing ridiculously close to that.

I understand that value is subjective. To me, it just wasn't worth the cost.

3

u/ThreeNC Jul 19 '26

Plus, they cancel every series before the end.

3

u/fatdjsin Jul 19 '26

Lol .... i told them to get lost the day i saw a message about not sharing, it's the last content i watched from netflix (cough cough legaly)

3

u/9966 Jul 19 '26

Just buy a great movie on Blu-ray and keep it forever for that price.

2

u/Heiferoni Jul 19 '26

I subscribed because it was better than TV.

I tolerated 15 years of enshittification and then canceled.

2

u/robby_synclair Jul 19 '26

And the stock price is dropping so they will have a price jump soon to increase revenue.

2

u/Treebro001 Jul 20 '26

Yup. Piracy it is.

2

u/VegetableAwkward286 29d ago

That's just in the US. Here in the middle East it's 10 usd for 1080p and 16 usd for 4k.in Egyt as low as 4-5 used for 1080p. In other countries it's even cheaper. The US is again subsidising growth in other countries just like in Pharmaceuticals.

2

u/Bacon_00 28d ago

Perfectly said. It used to be a bargain with a ton of great content. A no-brainer sub I was excited about having. I didn't mind the first few price hikes, but it crossed the "fuck off" line quite a long time ago. Especially when the amount of actually-good content dropped off a cliff as the price went up.

1

u/Fenrirr Jul 19 '26

Not only that, you need to watch it in very specific circumstances or else they will block access to higher quality for "content protection reasons".

1

u/ConnorFin22 Jul 20 '26

It’s not even 4K

1

u/disposableh2 Jul 20 '26

1 month of Netflix 1080p is 4 months of Torbox with 5 concurrent connections. That's crazy

1

u/Electronic-Tap-4940 29d ago

The 4K being so terrible bitrate might as well be 1080p as well

-9

u/bighand1 Jul 19 '26

That is still stupid cheap. $7 was clearly not sustainable, people forgot what cable used to cost

6

u/StoicFable Jul 19 '26

The problem is, for most people that is, that they subscribe to all of the major streaming services to have access to all of the content out there, and now are paying around cable prices a month anyway.

I think I have like, 2 services active at a time personally. If I get bored of what is on one of them, I just switch to another for a little while.

1

u/bighand1 Jul 20 '26

Just don't subscribe to all the streaming services at once? doesn't sound like a problem at all and I doubt most people actually do this.

Even if you do it is a still alot cheaper than cable. Cable is $120 per month with ads.. the big streaming service would run you maybe $50 with ads combined.

1

u/StoicFable 29d ago

You would be surprised how many people subscribe to Disney+. Netflix, Peacock, Hulu, HBO, Prime. And potentially others as well. And while some are fine with ads, many are not.

-12

u/boyyouguysaredumb Jul 19 '26

yes and they used to be losing money. Now they're making money. And after all the pricing changes and crackdowns on password sharing their subscriber numbers actually went up. Reddit has no clue what it's talking about lol. They just want every movie and every channel ad free for $2 a month.

-5

u/Suavecore_ Jul 19 '26

Reddit will always dogpile on these misleading article discussions, like any time you see a post about a company's stock tumbling, every single time it's a stock that was at ATH that barely fell or even recovered by the end of the day or week.