Sarah J. Frick, Deborah Fletcher, Austin C. Smith, Pirate and chill: The effect of netflix on illegal streaming, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Volume 209, 2023, Pages 334-347, ISSN 0167-2681, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2023.03.013. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268123000793) Abstract: Over 188 million people in the United States use a subscription video streaming service, yet digital piracy remains prevalent and costs the U.S. economy an estimated $29.2 billion annually. This paper investigates the relationship between a movie's availability on Netflix, the largest video subscription service, and intent to illegally stream the movie. We leverage a contract dispute that caused Epix (a cable network company) to move all its movies from Netflix to Hulu, representing a substantial decrease in the legal streaming availability of these movies. Using a difference-in-differences design, we find that reducing legal streaming access via the removal of Epix movies from Netflix results in a 20% increase in piracy intent relative to movies that remained on Netflix, as measured by Google search volume. This study contributes to the understanding of the substitution between legal streaming services and movie piracy and has implications for content owners deciding what platform to offer their movie on. Keywords: Piracy; Online streaming; Digital goods; Netflix; Google searches

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[–] LandedGentry@lemmy.zip 14 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Ha almost mentioned Spotify as well. Currently trying to get off it but I share it with my wife so I need to really have an automated system going for her to deal with plex and Plexamp lol just been hard to find time with kids and all that. One day I’ll get Jellyfin outside our network too but frankly I just don’t have a lot of experience with opening and protecting ports and all of that nonsense, so I just haven’t been assed to do it.

[–] zenforyen@feddit.org 6 points 1 day ago

Bandcamp solves all problems - you buy the CD as before, but digitally, including lossless FLAC, like 90% goes to the artist or their small label instead of Sony or Universal or Spotify, you can download the album or stream it with the app. It's good enough for me that I only store the files for backup and use the app for listening to most of my recent music purchases.