Technology

Pirating went down when paying for streaming was more convenient. Well, you are making it far less convenient.

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

No worries, I wasn't paying anyway!

🏴‍☠️ 🏴‍☠️ 🏴‍☠️

Back to piracy ...

and thus began the second golden age of piracy

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.

🪢 Heave-ho! Thieves and beggars!
Never shall we die! 🏴‍☠️

Jellyfin / Plex downloads 📈📈📈

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

Oh well, there's plenty of space for all of ya here on the high seas, welcome aboard, mateys!

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.

The era of piracy has returned. 🏴‍☠️

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!"

We can go start pirating again

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 ✨🙏

Looks around. You guys are still streaming?

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."

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.

It's incredible to watch them kill their own golden goose

🏴‍☠️

But hey, at least we also get connection issues when compared to cable.

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.

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.

Haven't sailed in a while, DM me tips on how to get my vessel sea-worthy again! 🏴‍☠️🦜

arrr, matey

Lol wut. My streaming torrents have never been better!

A little off topic, but I'd like to nominate the Paramount+ marketing team for some sort of award.

Their adverts are everywhere, I don't have Paramount+, yet every ad I see somehow makes me want it less.

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