Netflix’s stock price is down around 14% after the company released second quarter membership figures that are significantly lower than forcasts predicted. Netflix’s subscriber base grew by 1.7 million last quarter, of which only 160 thousand came from the US. The company expected growth in the last quarter to be 2.5 million members globally. Netflix says there was an unexpected increase in existing customers that left the service, resulting in the lower than expected growth. They attribute the customer departer to the end of a 2-year grandfather period which resulted in a price increase from $7.99 to $9.99 for members who signed up before the May 2014 price increase. Another grandfather pricing period will be ending later this year in October when those paying $8.99 will see their monthly rate increase to $9.99 as well. I wouldn’t be surprised if Netflix’s recent crackdown on proxy/VPN users was also a big contributor to the influx of existing membership cancelations.
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Thanks for the scoop!
FWIW, it’s the new auto-playing title screens (that prevent one from reading synopses at my own pace) that have me seriously reconsidering my membership.
I jumped from $7.99 to $11.99 because I added multiple 4K streams (when I bought two new 4K screens for the house and a couple of Gen 2 FireTV’s)…
Seriously though – for $11.99 a month, I get unlimited TV/Series and all the original content – that’s still less than the $14.99 that Apple ask for a month of music streaming — and yet add a $1 to a MONTHLY subscriptiom and people complain and drop the service???
If you got Amazon Prime on Prime day you’d just pay 5 dollars a month for 4K Prime content including Prime Music and One day shipping. They were charing me 9.99 euros just for regular HD so I moved to Prime for 5 bucks a month and now i get all that including for 4K. Don’t see why people are staying with an uncompetitive company like Netflix. Prime is way more bang for buck as you get a lot more than just tv and moves at less than half the price of Netflix’s comparable 4K streaming service
Because Amazon’s 4k content is both meager and stale compared to Netflix’s.
Amazon is clearly using a relative few number of 4k offerings under Prime as teasers to sell the 4k content you actually want, whereas Netflix offers all of its available 4k content in its subscription price, AND, actually refreshes and adds to what it offers.
I know which one I watch more.
Very likely it was due to the blocking of proxies. As much as the CEO may say it didn’t affect them , that was a load of BS. Of course it did. And of course they won’t come out and say it did.
Yeah, I think its largely due to that reason and it seems like a lot of the editors forgot about that. A lot of my friends dropped Netflix when they started blocking proxies, I can name 6 of the back.
Elias, you forgot to mention that starting January 2016, Netflix has started an aggressive blocking of users that are using VPN, Proxies and ant other unblocking services!
So, many Netflix users from other countries from around the world, are now canceling their accounts, because they now can not watch the contents of all the regions that Netflix offers…
Discontent over this Aggressive Netflix Blocking, is widespread and is boiling:
http://www.wired.com/2016/03/netflix-discontent-blocked-vpns-boiling/
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/netflix-blocking-vpns-everything-you-need-know-about-fight-stop-you-seeing-us-content-1538255
http://www.news.com.au/technology/home-entertainment/tv/netflix-begins-blocking-aussie-subscribers-from-accessing-catalogue-of-different-countries/news-story/ba2313d9bb39b0279b4f4abc3a5d2c99
https://delimiter.com.au/2016/01/18/choice-calls-help-defeat-netflix-geo-blockade/
http://arstechnica.com/business/2016/01/netflix-starts-blocking-vpns-proxies-and-other-unblocking-services/
Unfortunately, this new aggressive policy of blocking that Netflix is implementing now, has made many existing members cancel their accounts, and that also new Netflix users begin to consider using other streaming services, which offer a service and content equal or better than Netflix…
So, I really think that this could be the main cause why Netflix, contrary to previous years, is losing so many users!!
Considering Netflix probably isn’t in the business of making money off copyright violations, it pretty much had to happen. Cry that it’s “unfair” all you want. But if someone does not hold licencing rights in a region of the world, it is illegal for them to “make copies” there. Which includes supplying a “stream” or “download”.
The problem is netflix library is crap. Specially for those of us who have been on the service for a while. There about a half dozen good shows, so once you go through those there is not much else worth to watch. Netflix had a couple things going for it. It had the first mover advantage and cheap. Now those two things are slowly coming back to the rest of the industry. That business (producing contents) is expensive, high risk and easy to replicate by anyone with deep pockets. Much like streaming music is a lousy business to be in.
Actually I believe Amazon prime is more bang for buck as you get movies, music and prime service for around the same per month. This is coming from a paying Netflix 4 user account holder, also I don’t love in the USA and I’m from the English speaking Caribbean but Netflix pushes content from Latin America which pisses me off. I do pay for a DNS service but it’s a catch and mouse game when it comes to Netflix.
I have been with Netflix for years, but with the crackdown on Open DNS, the price increase couples with the poor content in Europe compared with the US, i’m now getting Amazon Prime for 5 Euros a month with 4K definition as standard, including Amazon Music, free one day shipping, and kindle books. That’s a 50% saving on the 9.99 Euro price I was paying for Netflix since the price jump. Switching from Netflix to Prime is a no brainer!
I forgot to add that as we are all Fire TV users there is even more reason to move to Prime as you can finally use the voice function on the Fire TV remote, while you have to painstakingly type the words in on Netflix. Now i get prime for half the price of Netflix and i’m also finally able to make the most of the full functionality of the Prime centric Fire TV and no longer need to try to reduce its footprint on my user experience.
We have both and i have KODI. Only have Prime for shipping and only netflix because i share it so i get it cheap.
Problem is Prime has not nearly the content Netflix has other then their original content.
Neither compare to having something like KODI but then if your going the 100% legit route my netflix queue is large. My amazon watchlist half of it i like isn’t on prime. The stuff that is if i dont watch right away seems it goes away from prime so that sucks so many things dont stay prime long.
Im going to cancel mine after the summer, partially because of the price increase, partially because I have access to prime and discounted sky and partially because of the content.
One other thing that doesnt help is their naff ui, trying to find stuff I want to watch can be annoying.
Cancelled mine due to increasing the price and VPN blocking. Less content and more money, yup, that’s a sure fire way to keep customers. Not.
I understand there reasoning for blocking the content but its still not fair to the users when other one regions catalogue is huge compared to another’s but they still have to pay the same price.
I cancelled. I would pay more to get US titles where I live but as the offerings I could get were awful I used a proxy, then a VPN.
It is time the film distributors woke up to the global nature of media nowadays, and of course Netflix could help by paying up to get more films on their other nation’s versions.
Another person who cancelled due to the heavy-handed blocking of international subscribers. When I joined last year, Netflix appeared to encourage “travelling”.
I cancelled in April. I would have cancelled earlier, but I had pre-paid until April. My family had been with Netflix since they were disc only. We switched to streaming only when they charged extra for both services. We don’t care for the original content, so the library is greatly diminished and very dated for my family.
I signed up for Prime last September during the September $70 promo — mostly for shipping, as they say. Turns out Prime is pretty good. My son was going to start paying for Netflix when the pre-pay ran out, but decided Prime was good enough. Then he decided it was really good.
I’m not out of Netflix forever, but we do not stream much and will probably not carry more than one streaming service at a time. Absence of some kind of ‘loyalty’ program makes it easy for us to sample alternatives.
Amazon Prime is pretty good, but there were definitely some Netflix exclusives that I missed when I switched to Prime. It’s actually pretty annoying that all these different services have all these different shows exclusive to them, so it’s like you need a subscription to all of them if you want to be able to watch all the shows you like. And I’m not even talking about Netflix/Hulu originals, I just mean regular shows.
Oh well, I guess that’s just how it goes.
maybe its because they said they loved Hillary Clinton
I just cancelled my account too! Main reason is the DNS blocking it really got annoying and of course the price increase is another turn off..