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Presenting our weekly edition from the pen of the Entertainment Strategy Guy, showbiz statistics maven and analyst extraodinaire.
Hollywood has a version of its own “climate change” problem.
This problem poses an existential threat to the entertainment industry, or at least the profits it used to make. Like climate change, it continues wreaking havoc, unnoticed most of the time, and more convenient to ignore. Go ahead, get in your gas guzzler.
At some point, when the damage is done, we’ll wonder, “Why didn’t we talk about that more?” And what I mean, of course, is piracy.
Take my personal list of the biggest problems facing Hollywood, as measured by the ultimate impact on bottom lines:
1. Piracy
2. Economic inequality
3. China
4. Digital disruption
You can read about “digital disruption”—the streaming wars—everywhere. That topic and Covid-19 dominate entertainment industry coverage. For the very pessimistic analysts out there (whose names rhyme with Mitch Meanfield), you’d add “the death of theaters.”
While digital disruption will certainly have winners and losers, piracy is the poison toxic enough to shred everyone’s profits. We don’t write, opine or tweet on this enough. And the recent leaks within the streaming wars, particularly with day-and-date simultaneous release on streaming services and in-theaters, largely have been glossed over as inevitabilities. The Black Widow Overtakes The Tomorrow War As Most Pirated Movie was one headline on Screenrant, written as if it were a legitimate business competition.
But “piracy” rarely generates news headlines, since it takes place in the shadows, like the ugly furniture we hide in the garage. Yes, every so often, we do get those headlines about how some film was leaked early to pirates. But not many. Since I think we should talk about this more, here’s my opening salvo.
Piracy Is Now So Commonplace It’s Almost Invisible
Like Neo learning about the Matrix, once you start thinking about “piracy”, you see it everywhere.
For example, I stream lots of electronic dance music. Sometimes this means live sets on YouTube. And when I go to YouTube, it isn’t hard to find lots of live sets from DJs. And many DJs willingly put up their own music.
Fair enough. But then consider this: why does the Google algorithm sometimes surface pirated/stolen videos above the DJ’s own feed!?!?!?
If a DJ has a YouTube Channel, they can gain followers, sell advertising, and build an actual brand. Which could lead to making a living. Yet Google lets pirated DJ sets—uploaded by random folks like “EDM Pirate 46” —beat legitimate videos in their algorithm.
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