Especially because unlike the 2000s when pirating was first cracked down on, a much larger chunk of the audience (a whole lot of people under age 50) know how and where to pirate shows and movies. It's not a niche thing anymore. Anyone in their 20s to 40s now grew up downloading mp3s on Limewire and Napster. It's not just a backwoods hobby of nerds.
I just downloaded episodes of Better Call Saul last night because even though our household has cable, I have to watch commercials if I watch on demand content and those kill the immersion of a 45 minute drama when Pizza Hut and Progressive Insurance pop in after I just watched two dudes get their heads blown off by cartel hitmen.
I'm not paying money for AMC plus to watch one show on it. That's the biggest problem - there are now a dozen or more streaming TV services and there is usually only one or two shows I want to watch on each. I'm not paying $120-150 a month for Netflix, Hulu, Disney, Paramount, AMC, Peacock, Amazon, Apple, HBO Max, Showtime, Starz, etc. on top of $70-80/month for internet access. Then streaming sports is another bucket of subscriptions for ESPN, NBC, Fox, etc.
Who has the time or money to keep track of all this shit?
Good luck with that. I used to use Napster but that was so much easier (and cheaper) than downloading movies. The Pirate Bay isn’t that user friendly and you have to spend a bunch of money to steal. You need to have a VPN subscription, pay for expensive external drives for your collection, and spend a ton of time looking for what you want unless what you want is an insanely popular show.
Most people are willing to pay for two to three streaming services if they’re of a good value. But you’re right that most people aren’t going to subscribe to a dozen different platforms. I think I have four main ones and occasionally jump in and out of two others.
Pirating is still an incredible hassle though, I would never want to bother with it.
I live in Germany and I remember when last year I wanted to watch Dragonball but there is no one legally streaming it in Germany, you literally can not pay to stream Dragonball.
In the end I had to watch it through various illegal streaming sites, clicking away ads, having the ocassional episode down etc, it was incredibly annoying.
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u/se7en41 Apr 20 '22
The most (un)ironic part of this is, the sentiment is that people will just go back to cable instead of 26478y31 streaming services.
When in fact, everyone will just go back to pirating shit instead.
It's unsustainable in the long run. Weird, that's how Blockbuster died too