On the streaming topic: piracy is becoming rampant again due to subscription fatigue and player fragmentation. So there is an alternative if people don't want to pay up.
No clue why MPAA couldn't pull an RIAA and have everything in one place like you see on apple music or spotify. 99 million legitimate music streaming accounts in the U.S. today, what a number. The only service offering something similar for video is piracy software that manages to outclass every streaming service from all these multi billion dollar companies in ux.
Music is sufficiently low cost that the owners of music do not mind giving it up for less money.
Owners of video media apparently want more money, and are betting they can earn more by not giving up control to others and selling for cheap.
I am inclined to agree with the owners of video. If people wanted easy access to all the video/tv shows, they could right now pay the various services. It is not that time consuming or laborious, it just costs a hundred or two hundred dollars per month.
The fact that people do not, means that people are not willing to pay that much per month (on top of tv service subscriptions, which come with live sports).
I think they are leaving a ton of money on the table acting this way, taking their ball and going home out of pride instead of making more money.
For one, subscriber counts would go way up just like how literally 1/3 of Americans are allegedly legitimate music streamers, because paying one fixed price for literally almost all recorded sound is a pretty good deal in the eyes of consumers. For two, you'd end up with higher 'real' subscriber counts with a one stop service; right now its probably $90 a month at least for an individual to subscribe to all the popular streaming services which is why literally everyone I know is sharing account passwords with like three other people rather than shelling out the same price as the old evil cable bill. Personally, I'd be happy to pay $10 a month for a one stop shop and not have to deal with texting my brother to ask when he will be done watching Survivor on the shared netflix account.
All this would add up to more customers lining up with more money, but its not done seemingly out of some false sense in these executives that their Disney+ or their Peacock will somehow capture market share (which by definition means securing more of the limited available popular IP) in a world where IP holders no longer play ball with eachother.
