Netflix this year experienced its first quarterly drop in subscriber numbers and multiple media giants are engaged in massive cost cutting exercises.

Seemingly diminished by Netflix's introduction of affordable, convenient media streaming, piracy diminished but its shadow now looms again. Locally and abroad.

MUSO who provide anti-piracy tracking and analytics had two gems to share.

... the Covid-spurred decision by movie studios to push their new releases straight to streaming, rather than letting the linger in cinemas, has meant new movies appearing in HD on pirate sites much more quickly.

A negative for this strategy which would similarly apply to the new cinema release then 45 day later streaming release approach.

In recent years, the music industry has witnessed an overall decline in piracy. The ease-of-access provided by streaming has garnered much of the credit for this, but the data divers at MUSO say that, more specifically, it’s a result of the industry’s decision not to hive off releases as exclusive content for certain streaming platforms. This is something that the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime are yet to come around to, choosing instead to splurge billions of dollars on in-house productions that will live on their platforms alone – whether anyone is logging in to watch them in the future or not.

We aren't pirating or recommending it to anyone else but for example when looking at AMC's in production Beacon 23 recently, our thought was - we might watch it five or six years from now when it eventually makes its way to free-to-air.

That, Moonhaven and their Australian filmed and produced Firebite have caught our eye but we can barely keep up with the new sci-fi content on the multiple services we already subscribe to.

And of course there's cost.

Creative Content Australia offered this.

When we’ve profiled people who pirate, the majority are university educated, they earn over $90,000 a year, and they subscribe to three plus subscription services. They are prolific content consumers, so it brings us back to they feel they have some sort of entitlement to piracy because they are already paying for services.

So we would expect to see the streaming landscape attempt to reshape itself in the near future.

How much better is non-exclusivity working for the music industry and could that translate to film and television?

[ Main Image: Harlock Space Pirate. Credit: Toei via IMDb.com. ]

References

Bonyhady, Nick (July 17, 2022). Netflix’s next challenge: piracy is back. The Sydney Morning Herald.

Pritchard, Will (August 8, 2022). ‘Free is free’: inside the UK’s film and TV piracy boom. The Telegraph.