[dstick]

> For years, consumers griped about cable bundling and having to pay high prices for hundreds of channels they never watched in order to get the handful they enjoyed. Despite the growing availability of legal streaming options since then, piracy statistics show that infringement has remained a real concern.

That's the thing isn't it? It was convenient when streaming first came on the scene. Everything in one place. "I'll gladly pay for the convenience". After roughly a decade it's approaching the state where it's as fractured as before, but now you pay a lot more - all services combined. So I'm not surprised it's growing again.

[nehal3m]

I don't mind paying for a service at all; I'll happily switch one service for another every month or few months. The main sticking point the diaspora causes for me is I can't find what I want. Maybe some people subscribe to a service and happily browse and watch what's available. I'm not a huge show or movie buff so I tend to go by personal recommendations so for me the process is flipped. I start with a movie or a show and go 'okay, where do I watch this?'. Finding out is ridiculously annoying. Furthermore, there are services like Prime that will show you what they have in stock that is for sale AND what's included with the subscription in the same view. That means I can't tell at a glance what I can watch as part of my subscription and what I have to pay extra for.

It seems purposely obtuse to me, to nickel and dime. And even if I do pay extra to 'buy' a movie, the Sony debacle has shown that I can't assume I can watch stuff that I have bought indefinitely.

[WithinReason]

It's easy to find where to stream a show from:

https://www.justwatch.com

https://reelgood.com/

[bluescrn]

Streaming services have fragmented, increased prices, and fought back against account sharing at a bad time, too - as inflation and cost-of-living have skyrocketed.

Need to save some money? - First thing to cut back on is entertainment-related subscriptions.

[e12e]

Even when I have access to streaming from a provider - streaming from my own box is more reliable and convenient: access to my library from a single app; if it's on the disk I know I can watch it whenever.

It's easier to find the media on a pirate site, than to try to guess which service has streaming rights for a show or movie in my country.

[zxt_tzx]

I think it's interesting to contrast this with music. Music is dominated by a few big labels, which makes it very easy for each provider (Spotify, Apple Music etc.) to provide a complete catalogue and thus convenience. (Though this does mean Spotify's unit economics are much worse, partially explaining the foray into podcasts and recent layoffs etc.)

Furthermore, whereas we hardly rewatch the same movies, we constantly re-listen to the same music we first encountered in our adolescence (nobody can convince me that the 90s is not the pinnacle of pop music). This makes things like playlists a lot more valuable and sticky.

I am not particularly ideological about copyright/piracy one way or another, but I know I probably won't be pirating music anytime soon.

[nicoco]

> I am not particularly ideological about copyright/piracy one way or another, but I know I probably won't be pirating music anytime soon.

And yet, if musicians being able to pay the bills is your concern, saving what you pay to spotify and buying a few albums on bandcamp instead is possibly the way to go.

From https://neurodifferent.me/@clowncollege/109994297731928004 :

> I've been a professional musician since the end days of selling CDs, and I would like to say that having experienced the decline of CD sales because of piracy transition into the paid streaming era it's unambiguous that musicians were better off when mostly everyone was pirating and then some people bought CDs or other merch out of a desire to support vs today when everyone pays a nominal fee to a corporation that pays us nothing and also satisfies their desire to support despite not actually offering support.

[Youden]

I don't think it's that music is dominated by a few big labels. Film and television is substantially dominated by a comparably small group of organizations.

The difference is that music licensing has for the most part not been split into channels or subject to exclusive licensing. Music availability has usually been somewhat universal. If one radio station can air a track, most of the others can too. If one store can sell a record or CD, most of the others can too. If one streaming service can stream something, most of the others can too.

With movies and TV, this hasn't really been the case. Typically, one cable TV channel will license the content exclusively, so if you want to consume that content, you need that channel.

The video streaming model we see today is just a natural continuation of the previous business model based on competing through exclusivity. This isn't to say that it makes sense, just that that's the difference of the two.

[ghaff]

I subscribe to Apple Music but, honestly, if music streaming services went away tomorrow I'd be pretty happy with my own library which is mostly music I bought on physical media at some point or other. (Yes, some is from Napster but mostly replacing songs on old vinyl albums.)

[BLKNSLVR]

I feel like I'm a fairly way out there outlier, but I still find modern music that beats nostalgia.

But I also find music that was "before my time" that's just fucking magical as well.

You have to put effort in though, because passively you're just fed slops. The good stuff, the real nourishment, has to be dug out of the ground.

[pier25]

On top of that, the services do crap like not offering 4k hdr versions of modern content.

In Netflix all third party films are offered in caveman 1080p sdr. In Prime and HBO it's similar.

[TremendousJudge]

And good luck trying to figure out what hardware you need to have in order to actually get the high-bitrate version of the video.

[DeathArrow]

>That's the thing isn't it? It was convenient when streaming first came on the scene. Everything in one place.

I have to subscribe to a service where maybe only a tv show interests me and the rest is junk. Subscribe to another service for another tv show, and so on.

That is not convenient. Give me a website where I can pick from all online available media I can only watch and pay what I want.

[ghaff]

You can do that in many (though not all) cases on Amazon and Apple if you pay a la carte.

[TheJoeMan]

I own a full cable package with rights to ESPN, but didn't have the app downloaded on my phone. I tried to catch the end of a game in the web browser, and ESPN.com refused to allow access via web. Guess what was faster to search for?

[bearjaws]

Let's not even talk about the NFL, there are 2 times a year where I cannot watch a Dolphins game, living in Florida, while paying for NFL+ / NFL Game Pass. The whole streaming rights system is a joke, I forget the exact issue but IIRC NFL doesn't have rights to sell the games to local broadcasters, so it simply isn't available in the teams home state on their service.

[CubsFan1060]

I wish I had a way to quantify it, but it also seems like _investment_ has skyrocketed. 20 years ago HBO might make a high quality, high budget show. Now we have shows like the Marvel TV Shows, Wheel of Time, Foundation, House of the Dragon, the Mandalorian, Rings of Power, etc.. that all have MASSIVE budgets. A lot of that was funded by free money, but I think the quality and expectation of TV shows has gone up quite a bit.

[ghaff]

Aside from the odd miniseries, TV was mostly sitcoms, cop shows, reality TV over time, etc. Even HBO was mostly a way to watch movies until the Sopranos came along. There's been a massive transformation over the past few decades to TV being something on par with film in terms of talent and production values. I have no idea what the shows on network TV even are these days and, as far as I'm aware, there's nothing with any sort of buzz.

[2muchcoffeeman]

But I still need at least 3 services to watch them. When pirating is just as easy and at worst costs you 1 service: a VPN.

[DeathArrow]

What if you aren't into sci-fi and fantasy?