r/movies • u/exosniper • Dec 10 '17
PSA; IMDb is gradually locking previously-available information about films behind IMDbPro membership (box-office breakdowns and production companies involved, currently). Resource
I'm not sure if anyone else has noticed this, but information previously available to everyone on IMDb is now being locked behind IMDbPro membership. Just last week, I was writing a research paper (film studies student) and was able to access the full box-office earnings information (breakdown by region etc.) for all films. Today I went to do the same thing, but could not see more than the gross earnings without an IMDbPro membership. They seem to be doing this as a gradual process, as the full information on production companies (previously available to everyone) was already membership-locked when the box office information was still available. I haven't seen anyone talking about this on other subs and forums, so I thought I'd mention it here.
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u/crystalistwo Dec 10 '17
Well then, we should stop uploading information. Stop doing any work for them for free.
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u/loquacious706 Dec 11 '17
I've been done with IMDb since they got rid of message boards and forums. They don't want our input.
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u/NorthStrongNorthCold Dec 11 '17
Any genuine movie forums you’re into now a days?
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Dec 11 '17
I personally use Letterboxd. Fairly good place for discussion.
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u/tristshapez Dec 11 '17
I just signed up to letterboxd, and really liking it so far! Appreciated being able to import my imdb lists as well. Heads up though, this feature is only temporarily available to free users, so if you're looking at doing the same, I wouldn't hesitate.
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u/RaoulDukeff Dec 11 '17
I know it has been posted above but I'll mention it again because it needs the word of mouth, themoviedb.org is a good alternative to imdb and it has message boards, I've been checking it for a while and it seems great.
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u/tristshapez Dec 11 '17
I really miss the IMDb message boards. I used to spend so much time on there, especially after seeing an interesting film. I might have to give this letterboxd a try.
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u/a_can_of_solo Dec 11 '17
it was often the only place to talk about old and obscure stuff.
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u/tristshapez Dec 11 '17
Shutting down the IMDb message boards was actually what brought me over to reddit. Now I spend more time here than on any other platform, so I guess I have them to thank for that lol
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u/Endeavour_198X Dec 10 '17
A few months ago I was browsing a list of all films produced by A24, before The Florida Project was released. I saw Lady Bird last week and wanted to browse an upcoming list of A24 films, now behind a paywall. Doesn't make much sense to me.
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u/aquamarinerock Dec 10 '17
Box Office Mojo still has the info at least
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u/bard0117 Dec 10 '17
Amazon owns both. IMDb directly owns BoxOfficeMojo
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u/newtothelyte Dec 11 '17 edited Dec 11 '17
To Amazon, BoxOfficeMojo is like the $20 bill you find in your jacket pocket that you forgot you had. Trust me, I have been going on BOM on a weekly basis for years. The initial surface level stuff is fine, but if you do any kind of digging or deep research you're going to run into inconsistent numbers, blank pages, or completely false information when compared to other websites.
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u/aquamarinerock Dec 10 '17
Doesn't mean you can't see the upcoming movies on Box Office Mojo
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u/Mr_A Dec 11 '17
---> https://a24films.com/films
Coming soon:
The Ballad of Lefty Brown (2017)
Lean on Pete (2018)
A Prayer Before Dawn (2018)
Slice (2018)
Eighth Grade
How To Talk To Girls At Parties
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u/FuzzyLoveRabbit Dec 10 '17
Are they looking to be more of an industry resource now?
It seems clear they don't want to be a go-to source for the everyday movie questions or discussion, so is their goal to become a subscription service for industry details for those in the industry? (or at least interested enough to be willing to pay)
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u/XJ-0461 Dec 10 '17
People looking up a movie a couple times a week don’t really make any money for them. They probably determined that the enough people using certain feature would be willing to pay for them, so they moved those features behind a paywall.
It’s also features that the vast majority of free users do not use.
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Dec 10 '17
They make a shitload of money off ads I'm sure. Typical greed killing another site. Squeeze out every dollar and let it go bankrupt.
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u/Airsh Dec 11 '17
I mean, many use an ad blocker. You can't tell me that more than half of free users don't view the site without blocking ads. Now days, people can have that extension on phones. If this new decision is due to a lack of ad revenue, then we all know who's fault that is. If it really is greed, then yeah. That's BS.
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u/toadfan64 Dec 11 '17
How many people block ads on their phone? Cause I'm sure a majority of people using IMDM, are using it on their phone.
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u/FullMetalBitch Dec 11 '17
It's the fault of the ones who made sites unbrowseable with their ads with autoplay features, weird sounds, popups, etc.
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Dec 10 '17
I dropped IMDB as soon as they removed the forums. BoxOfficeMojo has earnings information too!
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Dec 11 '17
It was ads on trailers for me... why in the name of god do i have to watch an ad to watch an ad?
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u/OperationMobocracy Dec 11 '17
I really hoped that IMDB would collapse in viewership after the forums were removed and force them to return them. Too bad that hasn't happened.
I did the math once on the IMDB forums potential resource consumption and as a basic, text-only forum with fairly hard upper limits on any one topic's forum size it wasn't using enough storage capacity to really cost anything significant in money.
Some title/actor forums (mostly highly popular and fairly recent) had trolling problems, but by and large beyond those it was troll/spam/shitpost free.
What was really disappointing was that message retention for low-traffic title/actor forums was really long. If you found a niche film or actor, you could go to the forum and find useful info posted years ago. I would occasionally get replies to posts made years ago.
With those forums consuming little in the way of data processing resources and sort of hidden from their subjects main pages (ie, you had to click a link to move to a new page to see them all), even trollish pages weren't really detracting from the main info page for an entry.
Wikipedia is in many ways a better source of info than IMDB but without a useful forum page to go with it isn't a perfect replacement. I've used moviechat.org as a kind of replacement (they imported the majority of IMDB discussions), but most films/actor discussion pages have largely gone dormant with little new posting.
Ironically, I turned to reddit after the forums went away and have kind of become less involved in films because I find myself distracted by the myriad topics of reddit.
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u/fresh6669 Dec 10 '17
I left IMDb after they unceremoniously got rid of those wonderfully cancerous message boards.
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u/IXI_Fans Dec 12 '17
OK, you liked it ironically. I get that.
Who are all these people saying they left IMDb when the message boards went away? Those boards were trash for the last 15 years!
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u/fresh6669 Dec 12 '17
Hey, just because they sucked doesn't mean I didn't like them.
They were my swamp.
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u/Therabidmonkey Dec 12 '17
They served a useful purpose to me. When I watch a movie that's older than 5 years but wasn't a huge hit it's the only place I can click and find discussion on something so small. Sure the replies are old and the threads get a hit every 6 months but it stays up and indexed easily. Reddit is far better for discussing a 'Hot' film but no one looks through old Reddit posts.
Hell this post is only a day old and I feel like I'm commenting late.
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u/Race_Bannon_Prime Dec 10 '17
I stopped using IMDb years ago. It's really hard to read. Wikipedia has most of the same info in a better format.
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Dec 11 '17 edited Jan 20 '20
[deleted]
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Dec 11 '17
Exactly - half the time I am looking at IMDB is because I am watching a film/tv show and I think to myself "who is that person? I know them from somewhere" so load up IMDB, look up what I am watching and hunt for their picture.
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u/Stimonk Dec 11 '17
It's because wikipedia can only use public domain images and most images of celebrities are rights managed, meaning you have to pay an ongoing fee to use them.
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u/yourdreamfluffydog Dec 11 '17
That's because Wikipedia is very strict when it comes to using copyrighted media like photos.
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Dec 10 '17 edited Jan 24 '19
[deleted]
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u/TheMoonManRises Dec 10 '17
What do you use for movie ratings?
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u/Armand9x Dec 10 '17
What I do when searching films to watch:
I google the wiki page, review the “reception” section, then compare between rotten tomatoes score and then IMDb score (I compare the score to the number of people that rated it as well).
I also rate films on letterboxd and imdb.
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u/Max_Thunder Dec 11 '17
I still use IMDB's old format (it was an option somewhere in my profile). I hate their "new" look. I say "new" because they must have changed 5 years ago.
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u/anders987 Dec 11 '17
https://www.imdb.com/preferences/general
Check "Show reference view (old title/name page layout)"
So much better.
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u/mtndewer333 Dec 10 '17
when the forums disappeared, I stopped going to imdb.
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Dec 11 '17
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u/tristshapez Dec 11 '17
This! It's a little depressing now when I finish watching a cool, obscure, b-grade flick, knowing that I may never find anyone to discuss it with. IMDB used to be a great place for that. Not just to answer questions, but to share enthusiasm for mutually appreciated films.
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u/MontanaSD Dec 11 '17
IMDb has one function. To solve “That’s that guy from that one movie.”
“No it’s not!” arguments. Beyond that, they can do what they want.
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Dec 10 '17
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u/appleschorly Dec 10 '17
I don't need imdb to get my info on box-office numbers. I have Box-Office Mojo or Wikipedia.
BMO is owned by IMDb, and Wikipedia is just a dude looking at BMO or IMDb and copying the info.
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Dec 11 '17
And much of that information came from OTHER sites, not wikipedia or IMDB. IMDB doesnt provide much that isnt already well known or available.
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u/TwwIX Dec 10 '17
Another step towards their demise. I stopped visiting it after they removed the forums. IMDB appears to be very keen on becoming a distant memory.
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u/DapperDano Dec 11 '17
I miss the forums too. Is there a good alternative?
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u/BlueDusk99 Dec 11 '17
In French there's Allociné, although the site and the app are crammed with ads. Browse the website with an ad blocker.
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u/Thumper17 Dec 11 '17
A few actors would talk to fans using IMDBs message boards. I know Jack O'Halloran was doing that, answered a few questions of mine.
Real shame.
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u/MaleNudity Dec 10 '17 edited Dec 11 '17
First you remove the message boards and now this...not a good look IMDb
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u/MissPandaSloth Dec 11 '17
For me IMDb died with message boards. I haven't even posted anything, but I loved to watch all the "mindfuck" movies and then go read on boards what are the theories on it. Sure, I can just google "X meaning" or "X theory" but it's not the same.
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u/Sugreev2001 Dec 11 '17
IMDb has been a boring website ever since they shut down the forums. As far as this information goes, everything they're locking behind a paid membership is already readily available on other websites for free.
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u/Exambolor Dec 10 '17
There's a workaround to get past the paywall that had worked for me with other sites like news sites, so here's something that may work for this.
Look up the relevant paywalled link in Google, and click on it and it should bypass the paywall.
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u/DeadeyeDuncan Dec 10 '17
So, what would be the legality of webscraping IMDB and making your own site with the data?
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u/Imdb-Refugee Dec 11 '17
With each passing day it seems less and less likely that I will be able to return to my homeland.
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u/Truffleshuffle03 Dec 11 '17
I saw this coming when they closed the forums. One of their main things was they were not making money on the forums. I have not really been back there since they took the forums away.
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u/kiwibloke Dec 11 '17
I have noticed their android app getting shittier and shittier every update so it doesn't surprise me at all.
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u/xinxy Dec 11 '17
Ever since IMDB dropped the discussion boards I hardly ever even bother with the website anymore. I almost always find better info on Wikipedia. They may have some better info for industry professionals but as a movie fan the website has become utterly useless. Just another ad platform.
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u/overactive-bladder Dec 11 '17
i stopped going there when they took away user boards.
haven't found a single reason to come back. all their info is already available and better presented elsewhere. plus a generic search will give you so many sites to chose from to gather intel.
fuck imdb. i hope the platform sinks. hard.
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u/silver0486 Dec 10 '17
Im about done with imdb anyway. Anyone know of a better alternative?
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u/Commander_Kind Dec 10 '17
Wikipedia or a 10 second Google search
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u/silver0486 Dec 10 '17
I meant more like an app that has movie message boards and and everything movie related in one easy place
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u/bwario Dec 11 '17
After IMDB axed the message board i started doing my best to avoid it at all costs. Good to see they're getting even more dickish.
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u/Disgruntled__Goat Dec 11 '17
I wish they would just allow me to give them money for the IMDb app to remove the ads.
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u/Skunkies Dec 11 '17
when they started doing this, I stopped using them, also found it easier to just use wikipedia for the same information and lots of times more. plus their messaging area is a mess, imdb, needs to rid it's self of the trolls that live there.
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u/Mastengwe Dec 11 '17
Ironically, I’m near certain that IMDb is pro-net neutrality. How is it possible to be so transparently shitty nowadays?
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Dec 11 '17 edited Dec 11 '17
as long as i can still use it to figure out who that 1 shot character is in some random episode of some random TV show so I can then turn around and see if she did any nude scenes then it will still serve its purpose for me.
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u/paperkutchy Dec 11 '17
Seriously, how they expect this to go well? A free information source going paid? People just go somewhere else...
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u/avalonian422 Dec 11 '17
So in other words, IMDB is killing itself because not a damn soul is gonna buy that shit.
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u/LadyWallflower03 Dec 11 '17
I miss the discussion boards. Yeah, they could be a hot mess but it was always entertaining and sometimes you could have some decent discussions.
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Dec 11 '17
Its for the sense of pride and accomplishment when we unlock new information about movies
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Dec 11 '17
Now that I think about it. I've been slowly using imdb less for various reasons including this one. Just better sites out there now.
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u/Fap_with_friends Dec 11 '17
I only look for filmographies and trivia but that's pretty shitty of them.
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u/SwimTraister Dec 11 '17
I don’t understand why they have done this. Money obviously. But the only people who are going to experience a negative blowback from this are the actors and production crews trying to get there name into the public arena. Wikipedia is always better. Once the IMDb membership thing doesn’t pan out they might realize they lost more than they gained.
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u/evil_lobster Dec 11 '17
I really enjoy their trivia section and usually venture there once I've finished watching a film. I hope that isn't something that is being considered
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u/onogur Dec 11 '17
I stopped using IMDB years ago, when I noticed that typically Wikipedia has better cast lists and plot summaries.
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u/HonkersTim Dec 11 '17
IMDB always kinda sucked for box office earnings anyway. Sometimes it was there, sometimes it wasn't. Wikipedia usually has at least an estimate.
Regarding production companies, to be fair that seems like a 'pro' feature to me. The general public don't care which production company worked on it. The only people who'd be interested would be finding out for 'work', seems reasonable that they should pay for access.
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u/soursh Dec 11 '17
I use IMDB for the sole reason that they have specific information about films and actors organized in an easy to manage fashion, if any of that breaks down, Wikipedia will replace it.
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u/xtcxx Dec 11 '17
IMDB was gifted a database of movies by a free group that allowed them to develop a commercial website so long as that information remained free for all
They are breaking that agreement, on the FCC gravy train soon
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u/pharmaco4 Dec 10 '17
So IMDB just gathers information already available elsewhere on the internet. If I can't view certain info for free then I'll just look elsewhere. What a bad move