This term “streaming fatigue” is nonsense. It makes it sound like people are too tired to stream, and that’s not the case. People are streaming content at a higher rate than ever, from podcasts to award-winning movies. Everyone is jacked into the matrix; fatigue is a dumbass name for any problems on the horizon for Netflix and Co. But there are real problems coming.
The saturation of services does fluster consumers, driving them to tools that cross the streams making navigation easier. The changing landscape of sports will create mass migration from pay TV to streaming. There will be technological burdens and price hiking to cover licensing fees. Add in the exclusive content battles, and there will be blood in the water. Yet, all this adds value for a consumer; piracy is the only real issue for streaming’s future.
It’s happened before
Piracy has been around forever, but out of everything, it’s the biggest problem for Netflix, Disney+, Apple TV+, et al. Why subscribe to several services when one illegal website offers everything? They work exactly like a premium service — minus the subscription fee and hentai porn ads. It doesn’t matter what exclusive content you have, or the bells and whistles your service provides (4K, Dolby Atmos): free trumps fee.
Look at the music industry. It got ravaged a long time ago by illegal MP3 piracy. There was so much great music, and it all ended up illegally uploaded for others to pillage.
When you can download a song in seconds without paying, it’s bound to cause problems in the long run. Jumping forward to the music industry now, you can get every song you want with a dirt-cheap subscription to Spotify, or if you can cope with ads, stream it for nothing on YouTube. The music industry has become a husk reliant on gimmicks because of what piracy drove it, too.
Piracy is cancer that eats away at an industry’s future. Right now, movies and shows are exploding. We have more variety than ever. This was true for music. So, unless something is done about piracy, it will be where streaming ends up. Desperately hoping nostalgia in DVDs can generate revenue? It’s bleak.
Standing together
For years, piracy was accused of funding terrorism and destroying the quality of movies. No one cared because, again, free beats fee. How could it be true, when movies made money from the box office, merchandise, physical media sales, then licensing?
All that’s changing. We’re at a point where movies are almost straight to streaming. So, piracy will destroy a premium service’s solitary method of earning.
What’s baffling is that mighty companies don’t unite and force internet service providers to mass ban URLs. They did it in the UK with PirateBay and VirginMedia. As a society, we’ve already given away the majority of our privacy by posting everything to Facebook, signing up to stores, services et al.
Should be legal for an ISP to ban a user from the internet for watching something on an illegal website. The URLs are known, so what’s stopping them? User backlash, infringements on civil liberties…what about copyright law?
The only people who would dispute this are those streaming piracy. It might be cheap and convenient now, but in five or 10 years when the industry is ravaged, you’ll be the grumpy ones ranting about a lack of original content. Think of the kids!