I don't think we're quite there yet. Assuming a title is on a streaming service that I have a subscription to, piracy is definitely not more convenient.

I guess for someone starting from scratch, "what streaming service(s) should I should I subscribe to?" might be a difficult and paralyzing question to the point that the answer might be, "who knows, screw it, I'll just pirate everything".

> Assuming a title is on a streaming service that I have a subscription to, piracy is definitely not more convenient.

I'm not sure. A friend watches shows on a pirate streaming site, even though they are available for free (but add supported, not that this matters with addblock) on a legal streaming site. It's just easier to always first check the site that always has the desired content available for that particular target audience than some try and error or even an additional google search.

But context matters. If you pay for a subscription, wanting to get the most "value" out of that makes sense psychologically (just like the other mindset... "already payed for that, who cares where i watch"). Also if you already got the necessary subscriptions and google always directly leads you to the latest weekly episode, starting there doesn't make a difference. One that's not the case (e.g. you can only watch ever other show an the high sea)... well, having to repeat the search on more than one site would certainly be more effort.

Yeah, that's fair, I suppose. A friend of mine has a site he goes to for streaming stuff that isn't available legally on a streaming service. It seems useful to watch things that you can't watch anywhere else, but the quality is just so-so compared to Netflix etc. Reliability also isn't great; he sometimes also has to fiddle with which mirror the player has selected to avoid stuttering and buffering pauses. The overall experience is definitely worse, so I wouldn't go there first if a title was available on a legal service.

Oh but it is, if not more so because there are no dark patterns, no screeching autoplay trailers within seconds of opening the app, no 2 second pauses until the next episode, just a very user friendly streaming interface that gets straight to the point. But I won't divulge the name here.

Well that's not very... convenient.

They have different pain points. I subscribe to a couple streaming services, but torrents let me find content more conveniently than searching several separate catalogues, and Plex's paid version provides a better consumption experience than any of the paid services.

> Assuming a title is on a streaming service that I have a subscription to, piracy is definitely not more convenient.

good thing there are piracy streaming sites with all the content then :p

They know this but they will still milk as much as they can while they can.

not currently for me

all the properly licensed streaming services are about as and a little more convenient than 2004's piracy-scene was for me

the licensed music scene is top notch for me between soundcloud, shazam and spotify

just need to let youtube know that youtube music is never going to happen, and let the other guys know not to mess their things up

for music I only pay for spotify

and if spotify messes up in the availability, I rip the same song from youtube in HD and put it in my spotify library