Netflix became popular because it was easier then piracy.
With more and more content silo's (Apple, HBO, Prime, etc.) and Netflix creating friction like this I wonder how long before we are back to people pirating stuff like it's 2005.
I couldn’t agree more. I was using torrents 10 years ago and stopped when Spotify and Netflix had great offers.
But now, every second show is one yet another platform. I don’t even start with movies… So I’m back to using torrent because it simply became easier: there is one place to find everything.
We're definitely getting to the point where piracy is getting more convenient than paying again. At one point I was paying for Netflix, prime, disney+, and videoland (a Dutch VOD service). There was a show my wife wanted to watch so I check it on the well-marketed "don't steal, get a subscription - everything is available :)" service film.nl. Not available.
I do some googling and it's available on Prime, for $20 a season. Fine. Whatever. Go to checkout but can't pay because I need a US bank account?
Next weekend I spent a bit of time setting up the arrs and life has been great. Open Overseerr on my phone, request a TV show or movie, arrs do their magic, and within ~10-60 minutes I can watch it on any of my devices through Plex. The ecosystem of Overseerr, Sonarr/Radarr, Prowlarr, Bazarr, Plex.. and whatever *downloadclient+vpn) is just super well integrated. This all being a bunch of simple docker-compose files makes it accessible for anyone who has a little bit of technical skills and a free afternoon.
I still have spotify but honestly also thinking of cancelling it, I'm stuck in my bubble anyway. Paying 10 euros a month for the same few albums just isn't worth it.
Ditch Spotify and start contributing to open source personal library streaming apps — I’ve been using Jellyfin+Finamp+Sonixd for streaming my music library for a couple of months now, and I’m so glad I made the switch from Spotify. As a bonus, my money now goes to artists I choose on Bandcamp to buy physical + digital album files… instead of to the army of UI redesigners, podcast-pushers, and VC firms associated with Spotify.
This is what I have done but now that Bandcamp has been purchased by Epic I have nothing left because I refuse to use it now. It might be the same now but how do I know what's changing behind the scenes or if it's something I want to support?
I know how you feel. I suspect for now it’s fine to use Bandcamp, though I don’t like the feel that I’m contributing to Epic’s bottom line. Right now, I have to assume it’s just as good for artists as it was before, except with someone new signing the checks. I’ll be on the lookout for news about Epic changing things, abusing artists, or funnelling egregious amounts of money into podcasts, though…
I wonder if there’s an opportunity here, for someone to put a frontend on torrents, charge $0.xx per show, and pass it along to the rights owner after taking y%.
With all the people saying they pirate for convenience, not for cost, maybe enough of them would pay to be “legal” to make it worthwhile for rights owners to collect that money.
You could be Netflix minus the distribution issues.
This is legally quite simply not an option. You must make deals with every publisher separately and those deals will involve geofencing and folks saying "no".
It's going to be a cold day in hell when any of Apple, Netflix, HBO, Disney, Amazon, etc. license their own produced content for anything else then their own streaming service.
It works amazingly. They download everything for you, you can stream directly and even on your tv via their app or chrome cast or you download on your computer or phone. Seriously, the experience is as good as Netflix. It’s 10USD a month and you have access to everything you can think of.
Put is the best. Their secret sauce is they cache all popular torrents so they appear in your locker instantly.
It is especially good combined with Chill Institute. I can get nearly anything on my television from idea to streaming in < 15 seconds. I can’t program, but I’d like to figure out how to turn this into a Siri shortcut…
I went on the website and I seriously can't figure out what they do? I'm not joking, if people on here are recommended I'm genuinely interested, what does it do?
This used to exist! It was called joker.tk I think.
It would allow you to paste a magnet / torrent link and it would start streaming the file to you. Ironically I found it cause it was posted on hacker news. As you can guess it was shut down immediately
This is why I never stopped using torrents. Even though I have subscriptions to nearly every streaming service in my region (creators are getting their cut, right?). They're super convenient. I can search what I want in a giffy, even very obscure titles I can't find anywhere else. And I don't need to deal with variable bit rate or streaming interruptions or learning to deal with a dozen different UIs.
All media companies need to do is setup a subscription based private tracker and host their content there. It's cheaper for them, more convenient for users, but no, can't let users consume content on their own terms now, can we? Psychological control is the only means to growth.
>With more and more content silo's (Apple, HBO, Prime, etc.) and Netflix creating friction like this I wonder how long before we are back to people pirating stuff like it's 2005.
I can only speak for myself but I'm trading streaming services entirely for other activities and cancelling every streaming service purchased over the pandemic save the one or two my wife deems critical. Personally I'm just as happy to listen to a podcast or read a book, or even turn to creative pursuits like learning a new language. I wish more technical books were available on Amazon's Kindle Unlimited.
> Netflix became popular because it was easier then piracy.
It really didn't. Lots of people do not pirate. It became popular because it was cheap, and sold content for less than it cost Netflix to acquire or make it, and subsidised that with debt to built marketshare.
Now those days are coming to an end, Netflix is running out of road to borrow money, and it needs to bring in a sustainable amount of revenue or it will go away.
We can throw anecdotes around all day, but I personally know a good ~dozen or so people including myself who were huge into piracy before Netflix came along. Over the past few years, we've all gone "back to our roots" because paying for all the services today costs more than a full cable TV package did 10 years ago.
It looks like I'm headed back that way for music too. I'm a huge fan of rap and Death Row recently removed some of their most popular releases for the sake of NFTs?[0] This isn't how you get customers to go buy your music, it's a great way to piss them off and get your music for free. It's becoming a seemingly regular thing, with artists like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell removing their libraries where possible.
You can even look at Steam with their relatively wild success in Russia; GabeN himself has said "It's by giving those people a service that's better than what they're receiving from the pirates"[1] that you realize it's not a pricing issue, it's an availability issue. It's a similar deal with Netflix, if we're browsing through movies we probably want to watch one right now, not wait a few hours to download one or go to a store to rent a disc.
Another case is that in my country, there is no easy way to get anything - credit card not easily available and services just not available. People have been paying to get access to a Netflix account (about 5 USD per person). Most people can't download torrent, but they will go with the easier option anytime - right now is telegram groups.
> Netflix became popular because it was easier then piracy.
Netflix became popular because it was easier than driving to the video store. Then they added streaming and it was popular because Netflix was already popular.
With more and more content silo's (Apple, HBO, Prime, etc.) and Netflix creating friction like this I wonder how long before we are back to people pirating stuff like it's 2005.