The conclusion here in this article should come as no surprise. As has often been pointed out by sites such as TorrentFreak, the one aspect that paid content h

The conclusion here in this article should come as no surprise. As has often been pointed out by sites such as TorrentFreak, the one aspect that paid content has an advantage over pirating is the convenience factor. There is a huge convenience factor in the flow of "open Netflix" -> "search for movie/show by title" -> "start watching". And, as the world has witnessed over the last few years, many individuals are indeed willing to pay some amount of money greater than zero to achieve that "convenience factor". But, the balkanization of streaming content into separate, non-cooperating, silos is causing both the cost to increase while simultaneously causing the convenience to decrease. For the decrease in convenience, compare the flow above to the new flow: search for title in Netfix, find it is not there, switch to Amazon Prime Video, search, find it is not there, switch to CBS All Access, search, find it is not there, switch to Hulu, search, find it is not there, until one finally finds it in new service X, which itself wants an additional $10/month on top of the $10 per month that all the prior searched services also want. So, less continence (can't just find it as easily anymore) and more costly (have to pay for 5 or 7 or 10 separate services). What the streaming market is discovering is that there is an upper limit to how much viewers will pay for convenience, while the streaming services are simultaneously reducing the convenience factor (the one factor where they do have an edge over the pirating method). Therefore it is not surprising that pirating might take an uptick. With pirating the user gets to go to a single search system, perform a single search, look through and select one of several results, and wait a few minutes for the content to download. Pirating always had the advantage on cost, now the balkanized streaming services are slowly handing over the convenience factor to pirating once again as well.