There is a second set of the population that will never pay for media, or at least not more than very trivial amounts. Either because of lack of ability to pay, not thinking it's worth it, or not believing there is anything wrong with piracy.

Then the is the third group that will happily pay for content when it is reasonably priced and, perhaps most importantly, easy and convenient. If it's too expensive or too difficult/annoying, they will pirate.

The size of this third group dictates where the equilibrium is. If it's very small, then media will always converge in the cable style maximum extraction. But if that second group is large, then the cable model might lose more money than it gains by pushing consumers towards piracy.

This just shows that the availability of piracy is NOT the problem. It shouldn't matter to HBO whether I've pirated it or not: I could be a paying customer if their prices matched their catalog's value, but it doesn't, so they get nothing, piracy or no.

I’m in group 4. I’ll pay for streaming services to avoid ads, but never linear TV. TV is largely superior content - it’s professionally made and generally high quality. But if I get sick of jumping through hoops, I have plenty of other things to do.

The problem with piracy is if you become a fan of a series and gossip with your friends about it, now you're marketing that company's crappy service. It's a weird way to go about things.

That's what makes the dynamics so weird: it's not just, or even primarily, about your personal entertainment - there are social aspects involved, from wanting to belong with your peer group (e.g. talk about latest GoT episode with your cow-orkers at the water cooler), to all kinds of rituals (e.g. watching romantic comedies with a date/spouse).

Same applies to books and musics, to a lesser degree to magazines/news media. For some reason, it mostly doesn't apply to videogames; I used to think it was because they're a new thing, but these days, I think it's rather because the experience is much more individualized and requires much more effort (and time), making it a poor social object.

It absolutely does, but apparently not for your peer group.

OTOH if you don't have that in common with other people, you just talk about other things. It is the same thing with soccer for example which is the #1 subject around coffee machines for men (and now increasingly women).

What, you mean like babies and mortgages and bills and restaurants and health problems and gossip? I mean I can enjoy talking about those as well to an extent, but at times I like to change it up a bit.

For a lot of people I know, that's all I really have in common with them, besides geek shit. There was like a solid 45 minutes of me sitting quietly at a New Year's Eve party recently, because everyone else started going into all the Marvel and Star Wars TV shows they watched, of which I've mostly skipped (except Loki and a couple seasons of Mandalorian).

For the people who don't even have interests in geek shit, it seems like they're often very limited to the other topics above (or the other topics plus sports if they're into those). At least the people I've encountered.

It's not like I don't have other interests. I have a lot of creative interests, like making games, and writing, and (very amateur) photography, and music. But a lot of adults don't bother with that stuff (or don't bother anymore, at least), and mostly just consume the creative output of others.

Next step is not paying for anything altogether. A middle finger is the only thing those kinds of companies are getting from me in the future, and honestly I'd rather see their demise.

If streaming ever becomes like this, I'm also going back to piracy.

Distribution has become free with global reach.

So we have Infinite amount of content floating about. Not even bringing generative AI into the picture.

So infinite growing Supply. Finite demand.

I spend a lot of time in both production and post production. The price for good content has certianly decreased but it most certianly hasn't become any definition of cheap. Consumers want very hogh quality content these days and that only comes with experienced staff, you can use cheaper gear.

> Distribution has become free with global reach

Every time someone says this I want to know what where they get this information. So now I am going to ask, prove it. Show me the VOD service or streaming service that is free with global reach. Even network egress from any provider costs a ton of money nevermind compute for transcoding and storage costs. Again prove it.

Media and Entertainment sector has all kinds of bizarre economics cause it's used by the Telcos(check what AT&T and Comcast own in ME sector), the Tech firms (google/youtube, amazon, netflix, apple) to play empire defense and market capture games.

Demand is not decided by the consumer. Or marketing depts won't be getting the budgets they do for demand engineering from their tech and telco overloads. But all that free cash dries up or slows downs once the market capture phase is over which is what has happened with the end of the streaming wars. Disney, Viacom et al have realized they can't compete against tech platforms or telco subsidized shops on the distribution front.

Open an incognito tab, open <insert popular porn site> what is the very first thing on the page after the age disclaimer.

Let me give you a hint, "Meet sexy single in your area" isn't a meme for nothing. Porn is far from free, it is paid for by advertising, and from my recollection they are the ones that revolutionised the ad industry by bringing in pre-roll ads.

Regardless, if video distribution is free at a global scale, then go do it. Create a video hosting service with global scale with any video, not even ones people want to watch, create one that serves 40 views a month. Then come back with an income statement that proves your point.

That is the point I'm trying to make, you claim it's free purely because you don't know what the actual cost is.

I'm not saying the current providers are doing the correct thing. I end up sailing the 7 seas far more than I like purely because I don't even know which one of the 40 services even have the series I want to watch. You know what does? <Insert streaming site with dubious legality>

Ps:

The majority of porn content is user submitted, you knoe we already have a free video service that does the same thing as porn, it's called YouTube.

Big-budget entertainment certainly remains extremely relevant for things like star wars and marvel movies, I agree. Not to mention sports!

But the rise of Youtube and Twitch and suchlike have shown there is a great appetite for cheaply produced niche content.

Linear TV would never have considered it economical to air 30 minutes of chess coverage every day. But it turns out there's a market for 30+ minutes of chess-themed entertainment per day, paying in the low seven figures annually. And the viewers really don't mind if the mic is in shot or the guy flubs his lines, they'll do the whole thing in one take.

And sure it's not literally one guy, I know that low-seven-figures has to pay for video editing and community chat moderation and enough of a creative team to keep things fresh and so on - but compared to the production standards of linear TV, even way back in the 1990s, this stuff is very cheaply produced.

We can do phenomenal things for cheao these days. But cheap still isn't that cheap. Just a few 0s disappeared from the end.

Let me put it this way, it's unlikely even a large YouTube channel is creating The Mandalorian or The Witcher or The Boys anytime soon with a budget that only advertising will be covering.

YouTube is an amazing niche and is the only subscription I will happily pay for monthly. But when I want to see creativity who are truly inspiring it's unlikely YouTube is funding it and I will need to have one of the big providers do that.

For movies pretty much everything I wanted to watch would eventually show up. Typically a movie would first be in theaters, then become available for purchase on disc or digital, rental, and be included in one paid streaming service. Sometime later, maybe two years after it was in theaters, it should show up on some non-premium cable channel.

The only time I couldn't wait for things to show up on non-premium cable was when "Avengers: Endgame" was coming soon. I knew that one would be hard to avoid major spoilers for once it was released in theaters so decided seeing it in theaters was a must. That meant I had to get get a month of Netflix, which had the Marvel movies then, to get caught up enough for "Endgame".

I also liked cable for rewatching TV series. I'm not sure why, but when some channel is showing "The Simpsons" or "South Park" reruns on a regular schedule I like watching much more than I do when I watch an episode on an on-demand streaming service (or on DVD).

I think it has something to do with the latter being more deliberate. I picked that episode, which somehow makes it so I feel like I need to take it more seriously. When it is just "This channel shows a couple episodes every night" then it seems a lot more casual, like listening to music on the radio. It is easier to just sit back and relax and watch.

We can argue about how pervasive advertising is and how subtle it can be, but cable TV literally has commercial ad breaks.

For series the episodes are written with commercial breaks in mind. For example a typical "The Simpsons" episode is written as 3 acts and the commercials come between the acts.

Movies aren't written with ads in mind, but usually the cable channel running the movie takes into account what is going on in the movie when they decide where to place their ad breaks.

This makes that ads a lot less intrusive than ads on YouTube or most other ad supported streaming services.

With the ads not actually interrupting the story, they actually often provide a convenient break to get up and get a snack, or clean up after the last snack, or visit the restroom. And I can always pick up my iPad or Kindle or a book to pass the time during the ad break if I don't need to do any of those other things.

I am more than willing to pay for content subscription assuming they have everything under one roof and no ads. Pay for cable like service - fuck it. I'd rather watch the paint dry.

YouTube/TikTok/etc.: The market price is zero, the service itself and much of the content is funded through ads.

Debian/Firefox/etc.: The market price is zero, the development is provided through user contributions/donations.

Substack/OnlyFans/etc.: The market price is not zero and then the content is often available for free anyway, but enough patrons choose to pay to fund its creation nevertheless, either because they don't know how to pirate or choose not to. Maybe this is the same as the donation model in all but the eyes of the law, but in any event there are objectively people making a living from it.

For some reason, they feel they need to burn their own industry down in order to prove that people prefer piracy (or not watching) over inconvenient streaming setups. Is anyone really surprised by the current outcome?

But I'm willing to shell out some money for having someone cooking for me and doing the dishes.

Yet, only if the price is right.

A good legal bargain kills illegal ones. But then capitalism greed comes, with that enshitification, and as that lowers the legal bargain value, illegal comes back.

At the time Netflix was literally making a cash loss despite paying less than the cost of production for most of it's output.

2. That's a problem for them to solve, it's not a problem for me to solve by going like "alright Sony, I'll do you this solid and pay and inconvenience myself instead of pirating just because I like you and I know you're struggling" wink wink

I pay to see movies in the cinema. A few weeks / months later I could pirate them if I want to watch them again.

I have paid once. I am not paying again. It really is that simple but they will rather die than do honest business.

There is still a cohort of elderly people like my mother who is just happy I pay her a cable TV (through IPTV) service but they are a diminishing group.

To be fair, this is describing oligopolic capitalism in general; streaming services is just where it's most visibly on display for the general public. But the same modus operandi is pervasive throughout the economy: attract customers with good deals initially while maximizing lock-in by all means at your disposal, then start fleecing them. There's simply no economic incentive not to do this, and ethics don't even enter into the equation at the scale those companies operate.

In a more diverse market, competition provides some, albeit limited, check on all this, but very aggressive anti-monopoly regulation is required to keep the market diverse enough for that. I don't just mean breaking up actual monopolies, but even any semblance of market dominance must be mercilessly crushed to maintain competitiveness. Any form of "laissez faire" in the presence of private property inevitably leads to oligopolies.