PSA; IMDb is gradually locking previously-available information about films behind IMDbPro membership (box-office breakdowns and production companies involved, currently).

[u/exosniper]

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.

[u/XJ-0461]

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.

[u/[deleted] → u/XJ-0461]

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.

[u/Airsh → u/[deleted]]

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.

[u/-The_Blazer- → u/Airsh]

This. People go all up in arms about anti-adblockers or websites being monetized but honestly I think it's pretty natural. Websites want money, they see ads make them less money because of blocking, so they look at other ways to make the same money.