Will more streaming services result in more piracy?

The surge of services like Netflix and Spotify has resulted in a drop in piracy, as a lot of people prefer paying a small monthly fee instead of illegally downloading content from the web, which may or may not originate from rather shady sources.

While more choice is often a good thing, we're now seeing a flood of new streaming services. An article from a couple of months ago from TechDirt is trending again and it makes a couple of good points about how too many video streaming choices may push consumers back to piracy. Besides Netflix and HBO, you now have Disney+, CBS All Access, NBC Peacock, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, Apple TV+, and others. All of these services have exclusive shows, which makes it hard for consumers to choose which services they want as it doesn't make sense to subscribe to a plethora of streaming providers.

But as consumers are forced to pay for more and more subscriptions to get all of the content they're looking for, they're not only getting frustrated by the growing costs (defeating the whole point of cutting the cord), they're frustrated by the experience of having to hunt and peck through an endlessly shifting sea of exclusivity arrangements and licensing deals that make it difficult to track where your favorite show or film resides this month.

In response, there's some early anecdotal data to suggest this is already happening. But because these companies are fixated on building market share, and this will likely be an industry-wide issue, most aren't seeing the problem yet.

There is already too much fragmentation in this market, and it's getting even worse, which will likely allure consumers to explore alternatives.