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The Rise of Netflix Competitors Has Pushed Consumers Back Toward Piracy (vice.com)
A new study from network equipment company Sandvine finds that BitTorrent usage and piracy is increasing after years of declines. The reason appears to be due to "an increase in exclusivity deals that force subscribers to hunt and peck among a myriad of streaming services to actually find the content they're looking for," reports Motherboard. From the report: Sandvine's new Global Internet Phenomena report offers some interesting insight into user video habits and the internet, such as the fact that more than 50 percent of internet traffic is now encrypted, video now accounts for 58 percent of all global traffic, and Netflix alone now comprises 15 percent of all internet downstream data consumed. But there's another interesting tidbit buried in the firm's report: after years of steady decline, BitTorrent usage is once again growing.
According to Sandvine, file-sharing accounts for 3 percent of global downstream and 22 percent of upstream traffic, with 97% of that traffic in turn being BitTorrent. While BitTorrent is often used to distribute ordinary files, it remains the choice du jour for those looking to distribute and trade copyrighted content online, made easier via media PCs running Kodi and select plugins. Back in 2011, Sandvine stated that BitTorrent accounted for 52.01% of upstream traffic on fixed broadband networks in North America. By 2015, BitTorrent's share of upstream traffic on these networks had dipped to 26.83 percent, largely thanks to the rise in quality, inexpensive streaming alternatives to piracy. But Sandvine notes that trend is now reversing slightly, with BitTorrent's traffic share once again growing worldwide. That's especially true in the Middle East, Europe, and Africa, where BitTorrent now accounts for 32% of all upstream network traffic.
According to Sandvine, file-sharing accounts for 3 percent of global downstream and 22 percent of upstream traffic, with 97% of that traffic in turn being BitTorrent. While BitTorrent is often used to distribute ordinary files, it remains the choice du jour for those looking to distribute and trade copyrighted content online, made easier via media PCs running Kodi and select plugins. Back in 2011, Sandvine stated that BitTorrent accounted for 52.01% of upstream traffic on fixed broadband networks in North America. By 2015, BitTorrent's share of upstream traffic on these networks had dipped to 26.83 percent, largely thanks to the rise in quality, inexpensive streaming alternatives to piracy. But Sandvine notes that trend is now reversing slightly, with BitTorrent's traffic share once again growing worldwide. That's especially true in the Middle East, Europe, and Africa, where BitTorrent now accounts for 32% of all upstream network traffic.
It doesn't help when they put ads on the service. Amazon Prime Video has started randomly putting ads between show which is annoying but they also have copied what older ads used to do which is pump of the volume for ad which is really annoying.
>competitors
How generous.
They're not offering a competitive product. In fact, "exclusivity" means the product in question no longer exists. Even if you disregard the fragmentation, neftlix/streamers have become more finger-grubby, more "inform you of viewing opportunities you may be interested in", more metrics and number-mulling, more watch-as-you're-told and curating. And who can blame them, it's just optimal use of a sea of shallow dullards.
But I won't disregard it. Fragmentation isn't driven by "healthy market competition", this is kids taking their ball and going home. Kids trying to cut themself a bigger slice of a limited consumer pie.
Seriously, that pie isn't infinite. We heap out a trillion hours of viewsumption every year and they pick it clean apart. Everyone wants their pile to be given more. A billion eyeballs live in screens and the attention economy claws for more, big or small.
Oh wait, actual TFS is just eagerly interpreting a relative increase of torrenting in the upstreams. "97% of file-sharing is torrents" is like announcing 97% of typing is being done with fingers. It's not like we, being raised as consumer cattle, do much in the upstream anyway.
The old adage is true, competition is good, but too much competition is bad and leads to market fragmentation.
Listen up you Weekend Harvard MBAs.
NOT EVERY COMPANY NEEDS THEIR OWN STREAMING SERVICE, YOUR CONTENT ISN'T THAT VALUABLE. You don't have to fragment the market just to justify your existence and try to show everyone how you saved a penny by not letting Netflix rob you blind.
Seriously, negotiate a long term deal with one of the following and go play golf or mine cryptocurrency:
Netflix
Amazon
Hulu
YouTube
Done...
New flash! people can only watch one show at a time. We realize your catalog is Huuuuggggeee, but remember, only one show at a time, and people pretty much want the NEW shows.
If everyone in the USA watched a show simultaneously, that would be 300 million shows. That is the max.
Remember, no matter how you slice it, Amazon and YouTube own the streaming cloud, so you are paying either Amazon or YouTube indirectly at some point. Even Netflix hosts in the Amazon cloud.
So stop it already, pick a streaming partner and go play nice. Stop the fragmentation before it bites you in the ass.
If you make viewers work to find their shows by making them have to subscribe and pay for each network individually, they will just put that work into finding the 'free' content instead. Providers and content producers still do not understand this.
My new and improved cable PVR box.
We recently switched to a service called "Shaw Blue Sky" up here in Canada, and oh my god is the on demand system ever fucking shite. Like, I-can't-believe-I'm-actually-paying-extra-for-this-shit levels of crappiness. I've already cancelled everything I could relating to this particular "feature" (and bumped my internet plan accordingly), but let me give you a rundown of the overall experience:
1) Find a show you want to watch on demand
2) Click the show icon box art
3) Click the "episodes" button
4) Scroll through the seasons, click a season and unfold all the episodes
5) Scroll to the episode you want, click on it
6) Click on "Watch Options"
7) Find out the only options listed are for some random subscription service or some package I don't own
There is no way to filter for shows only actually available to me. I have to spend on average 35 seconds just figuring out if I can watch something. Then there's all the shows that I partly get- either one or two seasons but not the rest, or worse- some episodes but not others within the same season.
You can literally piss away hours just LOOKING for somehing to watch on that flying shitbox of a platform. I think they actually want to piss off people so they eventually subscribe to 4 different streaming services and tack on another $120/mo to their bills just to "get everyhing", because that's the only way to ensure that everything you hit in the browser will be watchable somehow.
This is why I've gone back to piracy. I tried going legit for 4 months, and just got shat on by Shaw's wonderful system. Sorry, but when I want to watch TV, I want to watch it- not browse through your shitty ass on demand browser that doesn't even have the decency to tell me what I can watch up front. It's way easier to just setup some torrents with an RSS feed watcher and dump everything to my media server instead.
That's not Netflix's fault really
The studios that make the movies and shows are starting to push them out their own streaming services and refusing the sell them to Netflix
The studios again can't figure out how to get it right. None of them thought Netflix would amount to anything so they allowed it to germinate. Once it took off they did what any clueless, unimaginative Hollywood exec always does when faced with a competitor's success: copy it.
Only it doesn't work out so well. The fragmentation and exclusivity is turning off consumers, myself included. It becomes such an amazing pain to find the content legally that it's just easier and faster to get it in a torrent. I'd pay for it if I could get it from a single source (or a reasonably small number of them, perhaps 2-3 tops), if it came in a high-bitrate H.265.MKV file with lossless audio, and without ads or onerous copy protection. I have about 1,300 HD movies on my Plex along with about 3,000 TV episodes. I don't even own a Blu-ray player anymore. I doubt I ever will. That is how consumers want to consume content.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
No one is going to sign up for half a dozen streaming services just so they can watch all the exclusive content.
One . . . . MAYBE two. After that, fuck it. I'm not going to bother with it. I'll go find it on Yarr Matey TV.
It's like Sony vs Microsoft vs Nintendo in the console market. I'm not buying another GD console just for exclusive titles.
It's the same for Oculus vs Vive vs Sony in the VR world. I bought ONE. That's it.
The irony of it all is cable companies exactly fit the bill for this, except they basically worked themselves out of their own market by abusing customers and refusing to give them what they actually wanted. It's doubly so since most (nearly all?) cable TV is now an on-demand stream anyhow. Even 'normal' channels are still an IP video stream, just without the ability to select a start point.
I wonder if cable 2.0 will come and be an aggregator of streaming services. I hope not, since cable companies are still utter scum.
Some streaming services are getting smarter and allowing an offline mode. THAT will drive down piracy if it's robust enough. Well, that and ending this idiocy of exclusive movies and all. It's one thing if you (netflix, amazon, etc.) make your own shows that only you host...but playing that game with movies? Broadcast TV shows? Yah...cut that shit out.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
Back in 2011, Sandvine stated that BitTorrent accounted for 52.01% of upstream traffic on fixed broadband networks in North America. By 2015, BitTorrent's share of upstream traffic on these networks had dipped to 26.83 percent,
I suspect that Youtube/Facebook video uploads are a large portion of consumer uploads. Back in 2011, many more people were still using flip-phones that took 320x240 video. Now, most of those people have upgraded to phones that take 1080p or 4k video. The larger video file sizes makes Bittorrent data look smaller in comparison.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Every time this topic comes up people complain that "Well now I have to buy N number of services at the same time and that adds up to more than I used to pay for cable!". I call BS. Why don't you just subscribe to one (or two) services, exhaust all of their exclusive content that you're interested in, then cancel and move on to another service. Rinse and repeat. By the time you get back to the first service they should have a bunch of new content for you.
For the small handful of times that you need to watch a SPECIFIC movie or show RIGHT NOW you can temporarily subscribe to a service that has it, or buy the BlueRay or DVD.
Every time this topic comes up people complain that "Well now I have to buy N number of services at the same time and that adds up to more than I used to pay for cable!". I call BS. Why don't you just subscribe to one (or two) services, exhaust all of their exclusive content that you're interested in,
Because if I'm going to do the research to track down which streaming service has the content I want, I might as well make the extra click to download it.
Prior to Starz leaving, Netflix had a pretty decent catalog -- plenty of movies and TV shows I wanted to see. After that, their catalog has been getting steadily worse, except for Netflix produced content (some of which is really good). But when I want to watch something in particular, I don't want to have to go figure out which streaming provider it's on and then potentially have to sign up for that provider just for that content.
If it's easier to find content for free download than to purchase it legally, many people will chose to download it.
His point is that piracy is a service problem. The main PC vendors that literally blow all the other services out the water in both content and earnings is Steam and GOG. While Gabe kinda does have a monopoly for PC games his point is very poignant for this topic: https://games.slashdot.org/sto... Steam being such an easy service to use for having games and keeping them updated means that people will want to use them more. It's not Netflix's fault though since before Netflix became huge, they had licenses for really cheap because the studios didn't think Netflix would take off. Then it did so now they are making their own services for each of the licenses and now the fragments are ruining the issue making piracy a better service again.
Every media company wants its own service so it can monopolize its own content and squeeze every penny from their customers. If they would remove their heads from their anuses they'd see that a few services offering everyone's content they'd make a killing. Micro transactions are where it's at. Ask the music and video game industries... Having to buy multiple services, navigate which content comes to which service and when will push consumers away. Make it brain dead simple and ubiquitously available and the money will pour in.
Competition is not what is bad.. competition is GOOD. Exclusivity is bad. Exclusivity is what leads to market fragmentation.
When they finally installed FIOS in my neighborhood, they door to door salespeople were greeted as heroes. We invited them in and made them tea or something. We gave them cookies. We signed up with whatever the hell they were selling. Neighbors made offerings of their first born.
Don't get me wrong, Verizon sucks. But holy hell, Comcast is even worse. They are so bad that we were happy to do business with Verizon.
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All these different producers need to stop thinking that THEIR offer is the only thing anyone could ever want.
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Its not competition, its the exclusivity that is killing it.
Show 1 is on Netflix
Show 2 is on Amazon
Show 3 is on Hulu
Show 4 is on HBO/ Other..
That's four monthly subscriptions just to watch 4 shows.... If all 4 shows were on all providers that would be competition, as then it would be the cheapest or perhaps highest quality content provider that would win.. THAT is competition..
The old adage is true, competition is good, but too much competition is bad and leads to market fragmentation.
That is wrong.
What is bad is exclusion, not competition.
The more companies manufacture a gadget, the more choice you have, the more they all are under pressure to improve efficiency (so they can offer lower prices) and to innovate (so they can offer new features), all in an effort to stand out from the crowd.
This works for smartphones, for cars, for almost all consumer gadgets, because all smartphones use the same carriers and WLAN and Bluetooth. All cars use the same roads and the same single-digit number of types of fuel. All electronic gadgets have the same power connectors. All washing machines take the same washing powders or liquids. You get the idea.
If you bring a smartphone that only communicates with other smartphones of the same type to the market, and somehow manage to get a double-digit percentage of consumers to buy it, and then two competitors do the same - then you have market fragmentation. But the cause is not that there are three competitors, the cause is that they are not interoperale.
The subscription service model is one of those business models that has market fragmentation at its core. It wants to be customer-hostile. Forcing as many people as possible to subscribe to your channel, perfectly well knowing that this will make them unsubscribe from competitors, is the business model.
From a consumer perspective, the only solution is to pressure those companies into abandoning a customer-hostile business model and force them into an interoperable model.
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