Cognition Dissemination: You Know What the Streaming Wars Will Lead To, Right?

The Golden Age of Television has been accompanied by the Golden Age of Streaming through services, specifically through Netflix and Hulu. (There’s also Crunchyroll for anime fans.) Streaming services made it no longer necessary to catch TV shows at a specific broadcast time or even remember to record them through DVR, as they’re now available to watch at any time. They, notably, rose to prominence before cable On Demand services. Having a bunch of shows all gathered on a few channels at pretty affordable prices has been a fantastic alternative to having them spread across dozens of cable channels. It’s no wonder that several subscribers have been into cord cutting.

Like all Golden Ages, this was not going to last. This halcyon era, in fact, has come to a remarkably quick end.

The age wasn’t thwarted by cable operators fighting back against cord cutters through tying the internet to it through pricing schemes — that’s a different issue. It happened due to how many companies saw how well Netflix and Hulu were doing, and started their own streaming services — all at the same time. This sounds like an unimagined level of digital hell on the surface, but the reality is even worse.

Have you seen the number of streaming services that have recently become or will become competition for Netflix and Hulu? It’s nuts. Amazon Prime Video has quickly become formidable competition, as has CBS All Access and HBO NOW, as they have a number of exclusive shows. Both Apple TV+ and Disney+ have launched in the last few months with their own lineups of new shows — the latter of which resulted in the cancellation of Netflix’s Marvel shows like Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and the Punisher with no plans to continue them, in a top-tier dick move. And that’s not getting into the alternate services like YouTube TV and the soon-to-depart PlayStation Vue.

If I couldn’t remember all these services from memory despite being an avid reader of news sites and blogs, along with being a writer for a blog, I can’t imagine how the average person is dealing with these. This will lead to mass confusion. And that’s not even getting to the prices for each of them.

Paying for Netflix costs between $8.99 and $15.99 a month, depending on whether the user wants a basic or premium experience. Hulu costs between $5.99 and $11.99 for the same offers. CBS All-Access costs between $5.99 and $9.99, depending on whether you want commercials or not, while HBO NOW is a whopping $14.99 a month for the only offer. Apple TV+ costs a mere $4.99, while Disney Plus is a mere $6.99, both of which are the only offers. YouTube TV is a massive $49.99, but offers far more than just shows for streaming. Even without that, there aren’t a lot of people who can afford all these, especially if they aren’t cord cutters.

The combination of all the streaming services and the prices for them will lead to an inevitable point: A brave new era of piracy. If people want to see only a couple of shows on a streaming service and can’t afford to subscribe, some will pirate them.

It will also occur because not every show or service is or will be available in every part of the world simultaneously, and not every consumer will want to wait. Disney+, for instance, won’t be available in Europe outside the Netherlands until March 2020, which means they’re missing all of The Mandalorian as episodes are released. Most of the audience will wait until the service launches in March, but others will watch it through other means. There’s a reason why the show is currently one of the biggest drivers of piracy through torrents. Apple TV+ also didn’t launch in countries like India until after it arrived in the initial countries, and it still isn’t available in Romania. Don’t misconstrue this as me encouraging piracy; it’s simply worth happening why this happens, and why it will happen more often in the future.

If there’s too much competition for most consumers to afford, some services could implode. PlayStation Vue was the first notable casualty of the current streaming wars, though it wasn’t as prominent as several examples listed above. It will be a while before a big boy streaming service goes down, given the amount of cash the companies that started them have on hand. That doesn’t mean there’s no chance of it happening.

It’s inevitable that piracy will blossom thanks to all these competing services, so a real and more immediate concern will be corporate efforts to fight it, a phenomenon that can often hurt legitimate viewers. Mass copyright claims will be one main weapon, but a far more dangerous one will involve lobbying Congress to pass new laws. Potential legislation could include potential free speech restrictions, reminiscent of two dreadful and thankfully futile initiatives known as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). Given the increasingly conservative lean Congress and especially the federal government have these days, though, there’s a better chance of terrible laws like those resurfacing and potentially passing. Keep an eye out.