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- cross-posted to:
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Republished here, as AI content is in the Public Domain. References are available in the original article.
Frustrated by rising subscription costs and fragmented content availability, viewers worldwide are returning to piracy at unprecedented levels, reversing years of progress made by affordable streaming services. Recent data from London-based monitoring firm MUSO shows piracy visits skyrocketed from 130 billion in 2020 to 216 billion by 2024, with the industry facing projected losses exceeding $113 billion.
Subscription Fatigue Drives Digital Exodus
The streaming landscape has transformed from Netflix’s early promise of “everything in one place” into what critics call “Cable 2.0”—a fractured ecosystem requiring multiple subscriptions. According to The Guardian, the average European household now spends close to €700 annually on three or more video-on-demand subscriptions. With Netflix’s standard plan reaching $15.49 monthly and competitors following suit, consumers are increasingly viewing piracy as a rational alternative.
“Piracy is not a pricing issue, it’s a service issue,” Valve co-founder Gabe Newell observed in 2011—a prediction that appears prophetic as streaming platforms struggle with content fragmentation and rising prices. In Sweden, birthplace of both Spotify and The Pirate Bay, 25% of people surveyed admitted to pirating content in 2024, predominantly driven by those aged 15 to 24.
Content Wars Create Consumer Casualties
The fragmentation crisis has worsened as studios create exclusive content silos. Viewers face scenarios where favorite shows vanish from one platform only to appear on another, or require separate purchases despite existing subscriptions. Even purchased content can become unavailable due to licensing disputes, prompting consumer lawsuits against platforms like Amazon Prime Video.
MUSO data reveals that unlicensed streaming now accounts for 96% of all TV and film piracy, representing a fundamental shift in how content theft occurs. Modern pirates leverage sophisticated tools including AI-driven search engines and encrypted networks that adapt faster than anti-piracy measures can respond.
Industry Scrambles for Solutions
Streaming executives are experimenting with bundled offerings and cracking down on password sharing, but these measures often backfire by further alienating users. According to Antenna research, one-quarter of U.S. streamers are “chronic churners,” frequently canceling subscriptions due to cost and frustration.
The resurgence marks a stark reversal from the mid-2010s when convenient, affordable streaming services nearly eliminated piracy. As one industry analyst noted, studios have created “artificial scarcity in a digital world that promised abundance”, suggesting that without addressing core affordability and access issues, the piracy revival may continue reshaping entertainment consumption patterns.
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Are we just sharing the AI summary crap in here now instead of the actual articles?
References are available in the original article.
Why aren’t they posted here?
The “original article” is perplexity AI summary of 4 different blog/forums that are all referring to the actual source. It took diving 2 layers deep into this to sus out where any of this shit was actually coming from:
The companies did this to themselves.
Even if I subscribed to every single service that let me, I still wouldn’t be able to watch the majority of movies and series. Because a lot of is locked behind region distribution deals.
For example, even if I subscribe to every anime service available here in Europe, I still wouldn’t get stuff that’s only licensed for distribution in Japan. Short of importing a DVD, there’s no way to see it legally. And some things aren’t available to purchase anywhere.
If they literally won’t let me pay for it in any way, shape or form… it’s hard to argue against piracy.
Piracy is, was and will always be be an access problem. Just look at music piracy. Nobody’s really pirating that these days because stream is cheap and convenient. Heck, I don’t even really pay for it as it’s included with my YouTube Premium.
It is costs. It is fragmentation (the biggest impact on cost). It is having the best plan and then finding that three years later, you have one of the worst because five new plans have been created above you at higher prices. Which means it is about losing features. The worst is when you pay for streaming and then get ads anyway!!
I subscribed to 5-6 networks through Prime (they frog boiled me into paying WAY more). Then they started playing ads on my account and, instead of paying the extra couple of bucks to get rid of them, I cancelled all my subscriptions.
The base plan for YouTube TV is $82.99/month, and I’d say it has by far the most ads of any streaming service.
If I can reasonably pay and access content, then that is what I do. If I can’t pay or get incomplete content, I go sailing.
I personally tend to go after items that are no longer on the market - say, old videogames that don’t have English translations, for example. For me, the whole point of money is to uphold the social contract and encourage people to make cool stuff, but there are a lot of cases where that isn’t possible.
It’s pay-per-view on steroids. Not only do you have to pay for the subscription to the service many of the movies also have a “rental” fee attached. Even if they’re 20+ years old. Fuck that.
Streaming services really have become the poster child of enshittifcation. My last experience with netflix:
- Resolution seems a bit blurry
- hmmm ok maybe it set to 720p
- Open the settings, options are high, auto, and data saver.
- Whatever happend to just selecting the resolution?
- Have to search on reddit for some obscure key combination that opens the debug menu
- shows 720p
- opens first support ticket
- support agent says to contact “the manufacturer of my device”, upon asking with “the manufacturer of my device” (pc) if he means intel, nvdia, or asus he just says “whoever made your device” and closes the ticket
- open second support ticket
- after some useless back and forth they eventually send an obscure netflix support article that full hd and above is not supported on linux
- immediately cancel because as a paying customer you get a worse experiance then the pirates who get 4k with no issues
And netflix is “generous” to give 720p, i think disney plus maxes out at 360p without DRM, atleast that’s what it looks like because they also use vague terms like “high” and don’t have a resolution setting.
It’s because they don’t make or support their own apps. 99% of streaming apps are made by the manufacturer of the device you’re using them on (smart tv, one of those streaming boxes) and then the streaming company kicks support to that company (which likely also has dogshit support that sucks) as they ultimately created the app (as cheaply as possible.
If you’re watching via the web app/browser that actually is made by netflix or whoever but their support is so primed for people never using that. Even if you do use it if you aren’t using latest chrome/win11 they will 100% blame all your issues on that every time.
As for the simplified settings welcome to the modern era of tech. “Power users” are bad, knowing what you’re doing is bad, having a clue is bad. Computers have to completely stupid now. It’s fine if it’s that way front facing, my mom and my partner don’t give a shit about terms like uhd and raytracing. They are fine with “better” and “auto”. But I would rather set the resolution manually on my gigabit connection and know what it is.
A mix of kodi, jellyfin, iptv, and navidrome for me. I have adfree youtube with sponsor block as well but that breaks a lot lately, google is aggressive, looking into peertube
Companies should be required by law to provide support. Following a dumb script and closing tickets because it’s an actual bug on their side instead of a user problem should be treated as a breach of contract.
This seems like a strange example of enshittification to me because unless I am mistaken, this is just always how Netflix worked.
Netflix new UI is horrible who thought that was an improvement.
Lol yeah. Most people see the limited catalogs and rising prices as enshittification. The quirks of video quality and bandwidth may qualify, but it’s a weird hill to highlight as a prime example
Reading the comments about how crap the service is or how dumb it is to pay for 4 subscriptions to watch the shows you want to watch.
I mean yes those are issues but I think the real issue is that we are in general just much more poor now compared to the cable days.
You can’t get the same amount of money out of people who are paying a larger percentage of their take home in food and rent.
The problem isn’t piracy, the problem is wealth distribution .
like a god damn scooby doo villain…
If only there was a simple solution that makes 95% of people return to watch their shows for a reasonable price in one place… no that can’t be it, its the pirates fault…
Counter argument - one place means a monopoly which, when run in a capitalist society, does more harm than good. In addition, when you spread low subscription cost among multiple providers it makes it harder to recoup costs.
Counter-counter argument - we have a lot of trash being made. We can do without a lot of reality TV. Id opt for less choice with higher quality than a lot of choice where you have to dig for gems.
With that out of the way, as a customer I would love to have my content in one place as it makes it easier.
It wouldn’t necessarily result in a monopoly. There are several competing music streaming services which all have essentially the same catalog.
Alternatively, a public state-run monopoly would work.
Exclusive licenses for content is a large part of the problem.
Counter-Counter-B Have all seperate providers enlist in “OUR SHARED STREAMING SERVICE TM” , and have them be payed out per viewed minute. There’s more then one way to get all the media together, and if I can spit one out in 3 minutes, they could too.
Would be insane if all the music labels had their own service. Luckily, in the music industry exclusivity is not such a normal part of the commercial landscape. It can be done, it’s just that they somehow don’t want it (for video).
in the music industry exclusivity is not such a normal part of the commercial landscape.
Wat. Try to make a streaming service and get any artist that has signed with a label already to go on your platform. You’re gonna find out very quickly how much exclusivity there is.
Yeah well there’s suddenly a whole lot of streaming services and yet prices are only going up. No one seems to fight the price war that would favour the customer as the theory dictates in open markets…
Because they’re not competing to get our business for the same product, they are monopolies of their own protected content that only they can sell us each. It needs legislation and regulation to prevent it from continuing
I agree, but also, this is capitalism, of course there will always be competitors trying to do it better. So should have Netflix been the only service allowed to stream videos? It was a simpler time when it was the only viable service.
Except we’re not getting competition, we’re getting a market sliced by exclusivity. There’s no incentive to do better, there’s only incentive to carve out a content monopoly so people who want to watch a show you control must use your platform.
simple solution is to have all content be on all platforms so consumers have a choice what to fund. Simple answer to “but capitalism”. Now the only winners are pirates and platforms are crying over “lost revenues” they never would have had anyway.
There won’t always be competitors. Monopolies exist in the open and in secret. Competition and making things better are from the past.
yea. shareholders want infinite growth, so of course every subscription service is going to squeeze every penny possible from the suckers who still pay for that shit. what’s mind-boggling isn’t the enshittification, it’s the fact that consumers roll over and take it
I started up my *darr instances as soon as they started ads in my paid plans.
Same here, cancelled everything and installed jellyfin
The things I hate are; Only the last 3 series are on the platform, the previous seasons are unavailable. Geo locking content. If you are a global company, get global streaming rights. I hate most US shows.
i just really wish there was an open audio description like how there’s an open subtitles though. :(
I’m not surprised. Without the cable subsidy, people aren’t going to pay for the quantity of high end content that they used to.
What they should do: Sell movies and series based on the Steam model. “Own” a series/film? You can watch it forever, with a “cable” model for those that graze media.
What they will do: Double down on greed, go after piracy via lobbying and political means, blame the consumer and make it worse.
Watch as they learn absolutely nothing and make everything terrible.
The problem isyou don’t even buy anything anymore. You rent it cause as soon as they loose rights you loose the media.
They can’t even keep the rights anymore. What right do they have to claim they can sell something that they themselves are renting?
The Steam model requires me to trust that you wont fuck me over at every profitable opportunity. Media corpos business models is fucking everyone over at every profitable opportunity.
It’s because it’s never enough. Shareholders forever want more and it’s finally reached a point where the consumer is taking full notice and being directly impacted. It’s a part of the global meta that streaming is ass, by default. They can’t just serve their function as a company, take their fee and be happy. More, more, more, forever.
