Piracy Sees 'Unprecedented' Pandemic Bounce, But So Does All Media Consumption

With a large part of the planet on lockdown in a bid to slow the spread of COVID-19, streaming video consumption has seen explosive growth. Streaming platform Mux this week issued a study stating that during one three-week period measured by the company, streaming video usage overall jumped 239%.

UK piracy tracking firm Muso TNT says they've also seen "unprecedented" traffic to movie streaming websites around the world in the last few months. The firm found that in many countries, the kind of piracy traffic traditionally reserved for weekends is now the norm during most weeks:

"Data provided to Motherboard by London-based Muso TNT show that between February 20 and March 20, visits to pirated movie websites by users in both the U.S. and UK jumped 31 percent. The data shows similar growth in Spain (35 percent), Portugal (37 percent), India (33 percent), and Germany (30 percent), with Italy the highest overall at 50 percent."

In just one month in the U.S. alone, the firm tracked 137 million page views to more than 19,000 websites offering streaming and BitTorrent access to pirated films, and more than 601 million page views of sites offering access to pirated TV content. The company says its data originates from an “industry-leading website traffic data provider.”

None of this should be particularly surprising given that pirates are some of the heaviest consumers and buyers of movies, films, and television content.

But it's worth noting that piracy, and BitTorrent use in general, had already been seeing a bounce even before the pandemic started. Why? While streaming is certainly cheaper with better customer service than traditional cable TV options, the rise of a universe of exclusivity silos has started to confuse and annoy some customers. With every broadcaster and their uncle now flooding the sector, hunting and pecking between a laundry list of exclusives and ever-shifting licensing agreements has become frustrating (aka "subscription fatigue"), driving some of these users back to the simplicity of piracy.

"Piracy is a level playing field,” Muso wrote in one recent white paper. “No walled data-garden, no exclusivity, no windowing and no theatrical release. It’s all there: consumption with no barriers."

Sure, this "subscription fatigue" is a minority of subscribers and not the end of the world, given streaming revenues are exploding. But pandemic or no, there's still some familiar lessons here about viewing piracy as a competitor or as a useful gauge of customer dissatisfaction. And based on the kind of price hikes we're still seeing at major cable TV providers, these remain challenging ideas for many traditional cable and broadcast execs to wrap their heads around.

Muso found that while visits to illegal movie streaming websites have surged, visits to pirated TV stream outfits hasn't seen the same level of growth, in large part due to the suspension of most sports leagues. With sports, one of the few things that keeps people subscribing to traditional pay TV, several studies on cord cutters have shown that the cord cutting trend is likely to accelerate -- with bloated TV bundles a likely early casualty as a growing number of folks experience financial hardwhip:

"Considering the financial crisis element of the pandemic, something has to give for the consumer,” Chatterley said. “If they discover piracy now the question is do they go back to multiple subscriptions?"

So while many things have certainly changed, the same core issues still apply. Companies still need to compete with the simplicity and affordability of piracy if they want to hinder its growth. That's particularly true of the traditional cable sector, which, for the better part of the last decade, has treated competing on price as a some kind of deadly contagion in its own right. Just because an entertainment industry executive doesn't think its fair that they have to compete with privacy has never mattered -- and still doesn't.