Elon Musk has tweeted a meme with the logo of The Pirate Bay to suggest that streaming services have become a nightmare and that is why piracy is making a comeback as an alternative.
And you will wonder. What need did one of the richest guys on the planet have to get into this ‘puddle’ when he has dozens of fronts to cover and resolve in Tesla, Space X, Neuralink or other of his many businesses. The truth is that Musk does not avoid any debate, such as when he supported Epic Games in their legal battle by ensuring that the App Store commission is a “Global Internet Tax”.
And it’s certainly not too far off the mark when it comes to streaming services: piracy is making a comeback. Many of us were betting on the arrival of this type of service, which has become a standard for enjoying multimedia content and has really turned a large part of users into ‘pirates’.
Entertainment is becoming a username/password/2FA nightmare pic.twitter.com/fKht3NKsho
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 21, 2022
The problem is when the model is diluted because there are “too many Netflix”they say from TorrentFreak. Paying for more and more subscription services and browsing from one service to another in a night of entertainment is not the best experience. And this gives way to the resurgence or at least maintenance of piracy.
The latest global piracy report says that the number of global visits to pirate sites increased significantly in 2021, to 132 billion hits with the TV and video group dominating. And that only applies to logs of access to pirate websites. There is much more on other sites like dedicated set-top boxes and illegal IPTV offers.
The data is far from the piracy peaks reached five years ago, but the cost problem (we can no longer pay for more subscriptions) and the usability of streaming services is obvious. As if for a guy like Elon Musk to dedicate a tweet to him that has received a good number of responses in the same direction:
The solution is not simple. In an ideal world, the user would like to have access to all content from a single, affordable streaming platform, but right now that is a pipe dream. For now, only pirate sites can offer that luxury, albeit illegally. The good news is that the industry still has an opportunity to convert pirates into paying customers. This type of user is usually one of those who consume massively and also checkout.
