Dropsafe

by Alec Muffett

Netflix vs: Spotify. Cancelling the former, subscribing to the latter; so this is why I am leaving #Netflix

Netflix: I got onto it as part of a user-trial (thanks Adrian) – but I just don’t watch movies at home, or at least there’s something of the “Sky Movies 3 & 4” about Netflix which puts me off.

The user interface hides choice from me – I see lots of stuff that I don’t want to watch (and have to scroll sideways to do it) but if I know a movie title I can sometimes fish it out.

But I have to do searching. And the search results are hit and miss. For those who are sufficiently old it’s more like AltaVista than Google, type in foo – where foo is in the movie name – and the results come back in a weird order, and you’re never sure if you got the title wrong or the movie simply is not available on Netflix.

If IMDB had a “watch this movie now on Netflix” button, that might be better; at least you’d know whether it was available.

Or, put differently: I’d appreciate it if Netflix’s search output included movies which they currently do not carry. Then at least I’d know why I can’t find Ratatouille or whatever.

Plus: I’ll be damned if I am going to wire Netflix to my Facebook account; but curiously I have little compunction about doing the same for Spotify, so can enjoy the social aspects of that.

In essence: Netflix is – movies are – too heavyweight to be social. Spotify is light enough to be fun, and social recommendations make sense.

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Comments

4 responses to “Netflix vs: Spotify. Cancelling the former, subscribing to the latter; so this is why I am leaving #Netflix”

  1. Michael Jennings

    IMDB is owned by Amazon though, and Amazon is a major competitor to Netflix, particularly in the US where they have a competing Sky Movies 3 and 4 service, so buttons to Netflix on IMDB are never going to happen.

    But yes. Movies are something to share in the dark with one person, rather than a publicly social thing, I think.

    Reply
    1. alecm

      Re: Amazon, yeah I know. Netflix will have to up their game to match it, though.

      Reply
  2. Gareth

    I’ve not used Netflix but have been a Spotify subscriber since the beta days. I’m a big fan of the concept but find the application clunky to use.

    The search is horrible unless you’re searching for something very specific, the playlist page never works how I expect it to when I add new tracks and the ‘related artists’ frequently has me scratching my head in confusion.

    The only thing that keeps me paying my subscription each month is the lack of content on the competition. Rdio looks good (especially the thin-client-in-a-browser aspect versus Spotify’s thick client) and addresses my issues with Spotify but lacks content.

    I just wish Spotify would open up and allow 3rd party developers to write a better GUI.

    Reply
  3. Dave Walker

    I really like the idea of having a “watch this on service foo” button on IMDB; it’s a shame that Amazon ownership means it probably won’t happen (although who knows – they might want to have a chat with some streaming providers and do some maths).

    I’ve not used either Netflix or Spotify (I like to own stuff, so I still buy DVDs), but it surprises me that search is considered poor; if the services don’t want to develop a search capability themselves (as their expertise lies elsewhere), dropping a Google appliance into their infrastructure ought to be a straightforward decision. I wonder what might be stopping them – issues with how the metadata is organised?

    Reply

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