> 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 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 constant…
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.