[ErikVandeWater]

>The other week, my kids were watching TV and my wife and I were in the kitchen and one of them yelled out, "Mom, something popped up on Netflix saying the price is going up. What should I do?" My wife and I said the same thing instantly: "Just hit okay." We didn't even know what it went up to...hell I don't even know what it cost before.

You and your wife both know (subconsciously at least) that people will switch to HBO, Hulu, or any other number of services if Netflix gets unreasonably expensive. It's broke college students that buy Netflix the most, and they would have to get rid of their biggest set of subscribers to raise prices significantly.

[bedhead]

First of all, the "broke college students" quip is wrong. Generally, Netflix's subscribers are fairly well off (in the US anyway). Second, even if that was the case, I can assure you that said college students would suck it up and pay the extra $5-10/month. This extra cost isn't putting anyone into bankruptcy. Netflix has raised prices several times and subscribers keep increasing. And people are just getting more addicted to it. And the competitive advantages is getting larger. And the (good) alternatives are getting fewer.

"Unreasonably" is the key word there. What is unreasonable? I think that for the vast majority of subscribers, they get FAR more than $10/month in value (or whatever it costs). Cable costs something like $100/month and it's arguably far worse of a product. Is $50/month for Netflix unreasonable? For some I suppose, but for most I'd be willing to bet no. Remember Ballmer saying no one would pay $500 for a phone? :)

[qznc]

> Ballmer saying no one would pay $500 for a phone?

And he is right. A smartphone is more than a phone. How can Netflix be more than a video player? One way seems to be to become a producer.

Back to Spotify: How to be more than a music player?

[majormajor]

One way is to be a ubiquitous one. I think the Apple TV is the only major omission for Spotify's footprint? Amazon Echos integrate with Spotify; I think Google Home does too. I don't think you can say that very often for the reverse. People do notice this sort of lock-in, and start noticing that their frends have Spotify and can run it pretty much everywhere, and so Spotify is the first one people check out. Generally people aren't super price-sensitive at this price level, outside of students, and students get some huge discount deals from Spotify.

Roku is the opposite side of the same strategy: everyone keeps buying them even though their interfaces and app ports are generally less polished, the hardware often less capable, than much of the competition. It's offset by being simple and well-understood (ever see someone try to use that Apple TV remote touchpad for the first time?) and by running pretty much every TV/streaming app out there.