this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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Strange Planet by Nathan W. Pyle
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It's one of the cheapest and most consistent streaming services.
Just do what most people do and rotate something else out for a month or two so you can support the people who make this stuff. Writers don't get residuals from piracy. And popularity on torrent sites doesn’t help them win renewals or better contracts.
If a show that I watched illegally is really good I make an effort to purchase stuff directly from the writers, or occasionally just give them a donation. Its not like the majority of a subscription would go to them either, just mostly in a CEOs pocket.
I could afford the extra subscription, it isn't just about shaving down costs. I have a very good "user experience", better than most streaming services I've used, when I pirate things. I don't have any apple devices to watch on, and have heard it is unpleasant to use apple tv on alternatives.
Lastly, I just don't like apple. Thats just my opinion, I don't wanna support them.
The writers aren’t the only people that work on a show. Buying something “directly from the writers” may sound or feel like it’s an altruistic move, but those credits at the end of a show with hundreds of names represent all the people who won’t get paid by you buying something “directly from the writers”.
Also, paying for things is how things continue to get made. If Apple looks at the streaming numbers for something like Strange Planet and they’re very low, there’s no season 2. All the crew on the show may find other work, but similar concepts may be labeled as “unprofitable”, and the market for ideas like “here’s a quirky web comic that we all love, let’s try making it into a show” hurts for it.
A sliver of what you would pay for Apple TV+ would go towards Tim Cook, sure, but the guy is actually paid a significantly smaller slice of the profits of Apple than many other CEOs are paid by their respective companies, and the pie of an Apple TV plus subscription isn’t divided up to only one or two people.
It isn't my job personally to worry about the employees of a massive corperation with more money at any given time than I'll ever see.
I pay the artists writers sometimes not because I think they are owed something for their work, but because I want to reward well done art that I liked. It isn't how I convince myself that piracy of media produced by large corperations is moral, I think piracy of media produced by large corperations is always moral because large corperations are inherently predatory on all public commons, especially when it comes to IP law. Just look at how they took away the entire concept of things entering the public domain from entire generations.
This guy thinks people that know how to download TV shows have "other subscriptions to rotate out"
It’s funny how people on this site want creatives to get paid but also think their work should be handed out for free.
These people live off residuals. It’s a big sticking point in the ongoing WGA and SAG strikes.
I think the biggest problem is fragmentation. Piracy is a service problem. Before all streaming split from Netflix I barely pirated anymore. Now it's the most convenient option.
The problem there is you probably don’t want Netflix to be $90/mo. In order for every thing to be on one service, either the amount of content needs to go way down or the price needs to go way up.
This stuff is expensive to make, and it will get more so once the strikes are over and writers and actors start actually getting compensated fairly for content made for streaming.
Convenience means more subscribers means more money coming in. Your rationale of 90 dollars overvalued. Just look at the music business these days. Or ebooks/audiobooks for that matter. There's no other reason to make everything exclusive to one streaming site other than greed.
Take a page from the games industry. Make new shit exclusive on your platform and then rake in the money via all streaming sites. The same way syndication works in the old days.
I think you might have a case when residuals are payed out from streaming services but that isn't the case so whether or not subscriptions are kept, rotated or dropped factors very little into the compensation creatives receive.
Right now, residuals from streaming are basically nothing, which is unlike more traditional distribution methods like broadcast syndication and home video sales. This is what the strikes are seeking to change, and I have no doubt they will eventually succeed. But I do doubt that the piracy advocates around here will suddenly start paying for their content.
Where piracy does affect creative compensation today is how viewership numbers factor into renewal negotiations. Creatives have a lot more leverage when their show is a significant source of revenue for the studio. They usually get much more favorable compensation with a third season, because that is when new contracts are typically signed.
Part of why companies like Netflix are fighting streaming residuals is because it will require them to be a lot more transparent about what their customers are watching, so the streaming industry could end up looking very interesting in a few years.
Ah yes, residuals, famously something that streaming services provide. Paying for a sub service isn't supporting creators, it's exclusively supporting an army of middlemen and marketers. If you want to support creatives, buy physical media (I own some blu rays even though no device in my home is capable of playing them) or merchandise.