Pirating went down when paying for streaming was more convenient. Well, you are making it far less convenient.
Streaming has become cable 2.0.
It was wonderful when everything was on one, maybe two providers. Could watch everything in a very easy, very affordable way.
But everyone saw that, went "I know, I want that money!" and spent billions building their own individual infrastructures so make their own streaming services, and right around we go right back to the absolute worst days of cable and bullshit.
Only thing stopping me from saying fuck it and downloading shit I want to watch, is the fact that I no longer know what the good sites are.. since I havent pirated since the heyday of the bay.
Arr
To be completely fair, it's been over for a while. Even if you completely forget about infrastructure, between the endless wars for licenses, endless removals of content from platforms, shitty inconvenient apps, and regional locks, it's already a dying market.
On top of all of that, they're implementing the "don't you have 5 extra dollars" strategy, with skyrocketing monthly prices for each of these. If it was 15$ a month to watch anything, i would still pay. but it's 15$ for each of them, and they still serve you ads, and sell your data
The funny thing is we're rapidly approaching the point where there's more digital content than any single human could consume in a lifetime. Including content from before copyright. So the main thing streaming services offer you is convenience and up-to-date media. But if you're just trying to entertain yourself 30-year-old 40-year-old 50-year-old 60-year-old 70-year-old content can be just as engrossing. You just get emotionally invested in it.
I've found a DVD rental place close to me with quite a collection. Honestly thinking about just unsubscribing from all streaming and going all in on DVD rental. I watched one recently for the first time ... you forget how consistently good the qualilty is compared to streaming (YMMV). But, in true hipster fashion, being more deliberate about what I watch, more openly exploratory, making more of an event of it, all seems attractive. If streaming were actually convenient, fine, but with the way things are now ... they can go to hell.
And the writer's strike shows that the artists don't get paid anyway if you pay for content, so they can't even play that card either.
The era of cheap streaming is over, now begins the era of free streaming
🪢 Heave-ho! Thieves and beggars!
Never shall we die! 🏴☠️
Well, hell. I guess I'll go back to watching less and buying DVDs. I'm not watching commercials on a service I pay for. That's a non starter.
Worst comes to worse, I can dust off my eye patch, grab my parrot, and take to the high seas. I don't wanna, I prefer to pay for stuff, but ffs, if they can't be reasonable, I guess it's back to arrr me hearties.
who the fuck pays to watch ads. what a ludicrous proposition. that's the part that makes no sense to me.
Oh well, there's plenty of space for all of ya here on the high seas, welcome aboard, mateys!
Jellyfin / Plex downloads 📈📈📈
But Wednesday’s move to significantly bump prices, marked an acknowledgment by Iger of the media giant’s intent to squeeze more revenue out of streaming by pushing consumers to the advertising-supported plans, which have proven to be more profitable.
“The advertising marketplace for streaming is picking up,” Iger told investors on the quarterly earnings call. “It’s more healthy than the advertising marketplace for linear television. We believe in the future of advertising on our streaming platforms, both Disney+ and Hulu.”
This is extremely important for them. Netflix's excellent deal for most of its streaming existence was obviously a thorn in the side of many other businesses. Even if streaming services can get you to pay an exorbitant amount of money on an ad-free tier, advertisers are frothing for the chance to advertise to you regardless. They want you to see their ads so badly. And let's not forget all the big tech companies, Netflix included, were riding high during the free money days of 0% interest loans. Those days are over, and the bill is due. Wall Street wants its money. And we are all the ones who have to pay up. Cheap streaming is officially over.
This is why these companies, including Netflix, have all introduced ad tiers. Not only is it a great way for them to juice their revenue streams, but also every other company wants a permanent residence in your brain, and then some. Given the way things have been going since duo-eras of the COVID pandemic and corporate profit-based inflation, they don't even need to collude on prices. All the execs need to do is look at the business press and say, "Hey, they're getting away with increased prices and password sharing crackdowns. We can do the same thing. The pay pigs keep paying!"
I really cannot understand why advertising is such a huge business. Where does all the money spent on advertising really come from?
Am I the only one that remembers the "cut the cord" and "stop feeding the cable pig" nonsense? What happened to all that? Thankfully, none of this has affected me, then or now. I don't usually bother with "programming" of any kind but, when I do, "arr mateys."
It is inevitable, every industry grows to destroy itself through contradictions. It is just annoying how fast this business model took to do it.
Have to keep the profits increasing every quarter, otherwise shareholders will sell and buy your competitors and line go down. The article talks a little about how a lot of the streaming platforms have raised prices this year since right now shareholders want to see more profit instead of growth with interest rates up.
It’s an ironic end to the streaming wars. After pouring billions and billions of dollars into constructing supposedly revolutionary streaming platforms, and decimating the business models that had offered the industry stability for decades, the ultimate product looks awfully similar to what companies and consumers were trying to break free from in the first place.
I'll still take streaming any day over cable.
No contract and you can put everything in rotation. Sign up for a month, binge, cancel, next.
Sign up for a month, binge, cancel, next.
That's not going to last. As soon as they run the numbers and decide it's worth it, they'll create ways to lock you in.
The streaming companies are starting to get wise to that. They've started splitting seasons and releasing them separately so that you have to be subbed for 2 months.
What an unusually comedic yet depressing final comments in the article:
It’s an ironic end to the streaming wars. After pouring billions and billions of dollars into constructing supposedly revolutionary streaming platforms, and decimating the business models that had offered the industry stability for decades, the ultimate product looks awfully similar to what companies and consumers were trying to break free from in the first place.
Im just gonna parrot what the other person remarked because what they said is pretty on point: I mean this is basically inevitable. We know that capitalism doesn't actually seek the lowest price as its evangelists usually preach, but the highest - and so there is no way that streaming will not balloon over time to a price comparable to the cable TV plans of the past.
Yarrr
I'm paying for Spotify and Netflix because they are very convenient. I'm not paying for another 5 subscriptions because they maybe have this one show I would like to watch. They worked hard on fragmenting the marked and now they will complain people don't want to pay for 10 different subscriptions
I realized a year or so ago (after a letter from my isp) that I didn’t actually need to torrent anymore. There are websites like bflix.io (and I’m sure many others) that have basically everything streaming for free. Fuck subscriptions. Would maybe go back to torrenting if I got a vpn sorted out, but you’re not gonna get in trouble for streaming shit on a pirate website, so for now it’s the best solution I’ve found. Certainly not paying any of these assholes. Lol. Fuck outta here with that.
I need a cheap VPN, it's the only thing I didn't have to worry about before I (apparently temporarily) retired. 🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
We came back to another cycle of big corporations forgetting they have to be more convenient than pirating.
Can't speak for anyone else, but just having an actual no logs VPN for less than the cost of one streaming service while also using qbittorrent with the torrent site search function is so much more convenient than spending probably hundreds at this point for streaming services I might only watch anything on once a blue moon.
I think I'm gonna go sailing the seven seas again.
Around 2010 there was this "pledge" where a website people basically collected a list of things they'd require in order to stop pirating tv shows and movies and I think it came down to:
Provide easy access to large library Provide multi language support, must offer original language Allow downloads/offline viewing Be reasonably priced
Plus some additional stuff I can't remember.
When Netflix got big, they basically covered it all. Then everyone wanted a piece of the pie.
Back to piracy then. 15$ for put.io ✨🙏
I don't know, my stremio app and torrent client is still working. The era of cheap streaming may be over, but the era of free streaming never ended!
I mean people spent $100/mo. on cable for decades with no option to opt out of ads. And they had to just like jump into the middle of whatever happened to be on at the time.
sings Farewell and adieu to you greedy streamers.
Farewell and adieu, to you subscription pains
For we're now returning to the torrents of the pirates
and we may ner see you curs'd streamers again
We'll post and we'll flame like true software pirates
we'll post and we'll flame, all over the net
Until we can find us an FTP server
And get all the slop that we're ach'n to get
The era of free streaming is still going strong. 
And that's why I use the questionably legal streaming sites... at this point I have been radicalized enough to find copyright an offensive premise
And that's me done with Disney+ - big price hikes and the removal of password sharing have killed the value in it.
Plus, I have such a massive backlog of things to watch, I wouldn't even notice.
This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.
Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.
Rules:
1: All Lemmy rules apply
2: Do not post low effort posts
3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff
4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.
5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)
6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist
7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed