Indeed. I wonder if in these executive conversations anyone ever asks the question, "Music has been purchaseable now without DRM for quite a while. Why has music piracy essentially died but movies/TV shows/etc is still as hot as ever?"
To be fair, I think the fractured rights thing is a big thing a well. I can subscribe to one music service - Spotify, Amazon, Apple, Tidal - and pretty much every new release is available on all of them (or risk a terrible opening week/zero buzz if you go for the 'exclusive' - but ever then, available a week or so later).
The movie/TV companies sell their show to the SVOD platform that offers the most in the territory. Or it's developed by the service themselves. So if you have to subscribe to a handful of services to watch everything your friends recommend.
Most of us can afford one music service. If you're forced into 5 streaming services a lot of people will just pirate. And even for those that do pay - the "we'll show this in the UK a week later than the US" means unless you pirate it, it's spoiled on social media within a few days.
The economics of shoving the entire output of the entertainment industry on a single $15/mo streaming service don't work out. It arguably doesn't even work that well for music. Ask any musician that doesn't rake in platinum records how well Spotify works out for them.
Less money and competition in the entertainment industry means less total content production and less impetus for funding riskier productions.
If you look back at American TV in the 20th century, so much of it was samey and bland because there were only 3-4 programs to choose from at any given time. It was hard to get networks to greenlight anything that didn't fit an already proven formula.
This started to change with cable and streaming. Consumers suddenly had a lot more options, and were also spending a lot more money. You had a lot more networks trying to stand out, and they put out riskier shows that rejected decades of TV norms.
Now that the industry is consolidating again, networks and studios are back to being much more risk averse, and that is hurting the quality of their output.
Personally, I don't think the answer is more all-you-can-eat subscriptions, it's frustrating for consumers and even moreso for creators. I wonder if some kind of usage-based compensation would work, where users can choose between watching a show with ads, or paying 25 or 50 cents per episode to watch ad-free.
Short film SF production house / curated YouTube channel DUST has been around for years, and appear to have a business model that works for them. And while I do not know anything about their finances, and I doubt they make blockbuster money, their content is typically more enjoyable to watch than most stuff I see streaming elsewhere.
Why would I pay for anything when I can make an exact copy without taking away the original?
If you want to argue about copyright infringement, do, but don't equate it to theft. That's an old and tired argument that isn't useful for setting policy.
Because you're an adult who understands that software, films, music, art, books, etc all have (significant) financial costs to produce and the people who make them have a right to the fruit of their labor as long as those fruits are required for them to continue eating. And because it's obvious you are not making an exact copy, because the original is legally licensed and the copy is not.
I'm sure you'd feel this way about someone stealing your identity, right? After all, your SSN can be copied exactly without taking away the original. Just ignore all externalities to the specific act of copying.
Plagiarism is another thing that's super cool under this strictly "immediate and physical" worldview of morality. There's no reason anyone would ever want to stop it, since it isn't tangibly destructive and we don't think of secondary effects when setting policy.
I know it's because you personally get something out of it, but I cannot even fathom trying to say this trite with a straight face. At least be a grown up and just say you want free stuff and don't care if it hurts upstream, like the rest of us. I really can't stand this new-age moral grandstanding piracy where you pretend you aren't a petty thief.
I think you've missed the point of my comment entirely. The point was, don't equate copyright infringement to theft; they're separate activities. If you want to argue that copyright infringement is unethical, argue that, but don't make a trite analogy to "shoplifting" and drop the mic.
As for the rest: I have consistently argued that copyright should not exist, and I will continue to do so. I think it's a net loss.
When these companies make their services so painful and inconvenient, of course people are going to go to (less ethical but more convenient) alternatives.
Certainly there's some, though I would gladly pay for downloadable drm free copies. I have no problem paying, but I do have a problem renting, which is all the digital purchases today are, despite marketing propaganda
Obscure musicians never made a lot of money. That's not Spotify's fault. It's just a. Industry where the majority doesn't make it. Gigs are still the main way to earn money for them.
And for video it wouldn't have to be $15. People easily pay $50-80 for cable channel packages. A comprehensive streaming service could cost similar. The willingness to pay is there. I'm just really sick of this shit paying for tons of different services.
When Netflix was the only game in town I subscribed to it. And prime later. But now I've dropped all my subs and gone back to the jolly roger. As have many people I know.
We have a saying in Holland: he who looks too deep in the can gets the lid on his nose. It's a bit akin to the American saying of having your cake and eat it. But the thing is there's lucky so many profits you can extract especially if you're competing with free but more hassle.
I don't think it's DRM. When you subscribe to a music streaming service - you get 90+% of the music you'll ever need.
But you can't get the same subscription with movies/TV shows. You get a fraction of content with each subscription. When there will be a reasonably priced subscription for most of the video content - it will change the situation.
So in my opinion, it's not about DRM. It's about convenience.
> "Music has been purchaseable now without DRM for quite a while. Why has music piracy essentially died but movies/TV shows/etc is still as hot as ever?"
If music piracy hadn't essentially died, how would you know?
You can go to several different streaming services right now and listen to the music of your choice. They'll send you the file and you pinky-swear that you aren't saving a local copy. But if you do save a local copy, that will look identical to you not saving one.
So we have several things going on:
1. You can purchase DRM-free mp3s from major vendors;
2. You can stream the music in a notionally non-lasting way, also from major vendors, for free;
3. If you pirate music directly from the major streaming platforms, that doesn't show up in the piracy statistics.
I suggest that points (2) and (3) are more significant than point (1). Point (2) depresses piracy because the benefit of having a copy of your music is lower when you can use someone else's copy for free whenever you want. Point (3) artifactually depresses piracy by not counting it when it happens.
The DRM thing is interesting, for a while if I was watching a show on PC it would detect a screenshot event and turn the show window black. This stopped working. I've seen it used on Netflix and Prime. Not sure if it works still now.
How many did before... my bet is an insignificant number. The vast majority of musicians work day jobs to support their art. The ones that do make money make it mostly from performances. Making money from recordings only was always a small niche.
Implication being that piracy reduced the amount of people who could make a living off music? Another explanation is that simply more people are making music. I suspect the actual percentage of musicians who can make a living is the same as ever though.
The Napster era was the period when I bought the most CDs, by a large margin.
It was new+exciting, I was discovering lots of new music. But at that point, casual piracy over slow connections (low-bitrate often-poorly-encoded MP3s) wasn't quite good enough to replace real CDs. And back then, MP3 was still a 'nerdy computer thing' and CD players were everywhere - and by far the most convenient way to play music on a proper hi-fi, in a car, etc.
But these days, there isn't really the same upgrade path from a lower-quality pirated copy to an authentic copy. Especially with TV/movies, now tied to subscription services and encumbered by increasing levels of ads.
