Stream any digital media for free without the buffering and shady websites
01 Jan 2022There’s something universally satisfying about a bargain, and something immensely disappointing about a ripoff. If spending your money is life’s greatest optimization game, then finding techniques that maximize your utility is thrilling! Did you know that by cycling new accounts on a restaurant’s app, you’ll never again pay for guacamole at Chipotle, a cup of ice cream at Haagen-Dazs, or 5 chicken tenders at Zaxby’s? Restaurant apps’ terms of service never mention exploiting a temporary email generator to farm welcome rewards. The Chipotle cashier may give me weird looks now that it’s been my birthday for ten consecutive meals, but my wallet is none the wiser. While it’s technically stealing, I prefer to think of it as a clever cost-saving mechanism. Most people agree that this practice is both legal and harmless, albeit a nuisance to remember.
Although, most people turn their head to this logic when it comes to piracy, or freely consuming proprietary digital media from alternative sites. This includes movies, TV shows, music, video games, live streams (i.e. sports), software, and books. It’s like a variation of rule 34: if it exists digitally, it can be freely obtained and cheaply distributed. And this is no frivolous party trick either, because digital media eats an eye popping portion of your income. Not only does the average American watch 4.66 hours of videos daily, but purchasing those videos compose 12-15% of household discretionary spending, and this proportion is constantly increasing (DataReportal). Whereas restaurant welcome rewards can save you a few bucks occasionally, piracy can save you over a hundred bucks monthly. Yet piracy differs from welcome rewards because content creators never endorsed this mechanism. The content is the intellectual property of the creators, and third-party distributors commit copyright violations. Most people agree that this practice is both illegal and harmful to creators.
Don’t believe me that piracy could save you that much money? Here is a rundown of how much my family spends on services on which I freeload. We believe paying money to watch ads is ludicrous, so we opt for the “premium” tier that used to be the only tier. These are the prices as of May 2024, and they’ll shock you if its been a year since you audited your expenses.
| Service | Monthly Cost |
|---|---|
| New York Times | $25 |
| ChatGPT Plus | $20 |
| Hulu (no-ads) | $18 |
| HBO Max (no-ads) | $16 |
| Netflix (standard) | $15.50 |
| Video game title (every 4 months) | $15 |
| Prime Video (no-ads) | $12 |
| Spotify Premium | $11 |
| Novel (every few months) | $4 |
These expenses total to $136.50 monthly, or $1,638.00 annually… While some of them are trivial to pirate: to read \(X\) for free, simply search “\(X\) free pdf,” others are exceptionally difficult. OpenAI, being a tech company, knows a thing or two about cyber security. I highly doubt r/piracy is going to acquire ChatGPT unless OpenAI blunders catastrophically. Nonetheless, every one of those monthly expenses can be alleviated. The LLM landscape is crowded now that Nvidia’s supply chain is catching up to demand and tech bros worldwide leaped onto the green pasture. Companies are bound to leak models the same way studios leak video games, or at the very least bootlegged and open source models will catch up in sophistication.
Anyway, most of these are subscriptions that sneakily cost more than we expect because of our psychological bias for small numbers. It’s easy to justify Spotify as the price of one meal a month, but after 5 years, it’s more expensive than an RTX 4070 Super…
Part 1: Streaming subscriptions are a ubiquitous ripoff
… because they are deceptively low value for money. The on-demand convenience of streaming is merely 2 techniques on top of downloading (CDNs + adaptive bitrate), which is not proprietary to the subscription model. The cause of this low value is partially because the market is dominated by 5 giant corporations: Netflix, Disney, Warner Bros, Google, and Apple. It seems like there is significant competition causing the market to be saturated with new content, which should be beneficial for the consumer because they get better products for cheaper.
In reality, these companies specialize in exclusive content that forces consumers toward multiple subscriptions, and then delay the charging of true prices to fool customers like a frog in boiling water. They falsely convince consumers that the streaming subscription model is cheaper than the cable TV model by first hiding losses in their deep pockets, and second creeping prices once customers adjust to their new standard of living. They exploit our commitment issues to cancel monthly subscriptions, sheltering the lackluster value behind frequent high profile releases. They even quell customers who’ve had enough of this chicanery with an ad-supported tier that keeps them on the line. But the return to realistic prices showed consumers the true value for money of these subscriptions. Customer satisfaction is at an all time low, and they will not accept higher prices indefinitely. Something’s got to give.
Trend 1: People are streaming more often to the point that it’s inextricable from our daily routines. The dominance of entertainment media in our routine has steadily increased, perhaps due to convenience or cultural reasons. Binge-watching is America’s new favorite pastime since we’re flooded by an endless barrage of attractive options. There is a surplus of content compared to what our attention spans or even the number of hours in a day can handle. And this trend isn’t focused on individual behavior anymore. Social interaction for new generations is undeniably centered around TV screens, which pushes streaming services to the forefront. But this means streamers have power over our wallets like a drug lord over their addicts: we’ll stick with our supplier even when their prices hike.
Furthermore, I think it’s very interesting how no one can agree on how much TV we’re watching. The standard deviation between online estimates of this figure is resoundingly high. I wonder whether it’s the survey methodology or the respondent demographic that caused such a large deviation. Do people vastly misconstrue how they spend their time when responding to survey questions? Did Datareportal query directly from streamers who have the empirical data, explaining their higher estimate? Nonetheless, streaming is undeniably a cultural cornerstone whose importance is rapidly growing.
Figure 1.1. Nearly four-out-of-five people spend time streaming daily (Bank of America).
Trend 2: People are spending more on streaming than other categories which signals a shift in our preferences. Consumers will not compromise on their culturally significant streamed entertainment, so they spend more compared to other nice-to-haves. Higher spending can be attributed to inflation, more quantity of content, and streamers increasing the size of their margins. But are we getting our money’s worth? Net expenditure tells us how important streaming is to our wallets, but does not paint the bigger picture on why. However, this graph tells us that some significant trend is materializing since early 2023 that significantly skews our budgets toward streaming.
This is a ridiculous trend. There are endless important things fighting for our discretionary dollars, like restaurant dates, gym memberships, international vacations, and computer parts. Yet, streaming is only gaining territory, indicating some recent change. Is this because television producers discovered some new successful formula, or content recommendation algorithms are increasingly sophisticated, or simply growing negligence of canceling undesired subscriptions? To understand the root cause, we have to quantify how much we’re getting for our money, and why the prices increase over time.
Figure 1.2. Monthly spending on streamed media has been outpacing overall discretionary spending (Bank of America).
Trend 3: People are paying more for the same services because subscription prices ballooned over the past few years. Americans are well acquainted with sticker shock, so It’s easy to point fingers to a scapegoat cause like inflation to justify price hikes. While inflation undeniably escalated prices at every step of the supply chain, from film production to network infrastructure, the underlying cause is a deeper paradigm shift in the subscription market. Streamers are entering money-making mode, whereas historically they have been in customer-acquisition mode. Investors in traditional media companies like Disney are “not prepared to wait 10 years to get to profitability like Netflix. They want it now” (Variety). Streamers succeeded resoundingly in their land-grab to cement streaming in our daily lives. They are now cashing in on their massive market share while finally passing on expenses to their customers.
But where is the breaking point? Grumbling customers with stretched wallets will not tolerate price hikes indefinitely, especially in a fast-paced and saturated market like media. However, streamers have a more insidious purpose in mind: “to push subscribers to their breaking point, and compel them to opt for a lower-priced, or even free, ad-supported plan instead” (Yahoo Finance). This yields a stable configuration where price-conscious consumers percieve a bargain while the rest pay full price. There is no ceiling to advertising revenue unlike fixed-price subscriptions, making it a lucrative bottom-line for these historically unprofitable companies. Their plan worked as intended: their double digit price hikes were met with single digit cancellation rates, accounting for re-subscriptions (Current). The shockingly low prices that lured consumers away from cable TV really were too good to be true, so expect further price hikes as the industry recoups their losses.
Figure 1.3. Subscription prices have been skyrocketing, and analysts predict there is no end in sight (Yahoo Finance).
Trend 4: People are subscribing to more services simultaneously because a single streaming subscription does not quench our entertainment needs. But, this trend doesn’t make sense when considering the incredible surplus of digital media. Netflix alone boasts 5000+ movies and TV shows; a person could not possibly watch the entire repertoire over the course of their life. Why would we double, triple, or quadruple our streaming expenditure when we can’t finish a single subscription? It’s the equivalent of dining at an all-you-can-eat buffet for one hour, only to go to another buffett immediately after.
Consumers purchase multiple subscriptions to consume platform specific content - media produced for and distributed by a small number of services. Unlike utilitarian products that aren’t proprietary to any specific distributor, art is singular and exclusively seeked. If I want to watch Game of Thrones, I won’t settle for The Witcher even though Netflix’s search algorithm tries to nudge me. No matter how good the alternative is, I’m going to subscribe to HBO Max to watch what I desire. It’s unlike a chicken sandwich that I can either purchase from Chick-fil-a, or from one of its hundred competitors. In order to partake in the culture, you can’t substitute with something similar. Streamers recognized that this is a lucrative way to coax new subscriptions, so they began to mass-produce their own content. Just look at the number of red Ns next time you peruse through Netflix: 55% of their content is Netflix-original (What’s on Netflix). This trend may smell like funny business considering the entire market is dominated by just 5 companies, but there is likely no collusion here. Rather, free market forces in this saturated market pushed wealthy players to branch out in a direction that their shallow-pocketed competitors cannot follow.
Figure 1.4. The percent of households with four or more services is exponentially increasing (The Wrap).
Trend 5: People are increasingly dissatisfied with streaming services because price hikes outpace new releases. Satisfaction peaked during the 2021 pandemic because people consumed significantly more media, so they were getting the most of their money. But as routines returned to normal, cost became the most important yet least achieved factor. Consumer sentiment may fluctuate often, but rolling averages illuminate the truth. Satisfaction temporarily increases upon the release of an anticipated title, but it returns to the true value quickly afterward. Besides, the current trend of aggressively bolstering libraries is insufficient on its own to keep subscribers happy. The resources that services pour into producing original content inevitably comes out of the customer’s pockets, so it involves a complex tradeoff.
But don’t overlook the importance of platform-exclusive releases. Though it’s a horrible trend for the consumer, exclusive releases are the beating heart that keeps a service relevant. We may be dissatisfied to realize that our current subscriptions don’t have some anticipated release, but HBO would be nowhere without Game of Thrones, Netflix without Stranger Things, or Hulu without The Handmaid’s Tale. This exclusivity trend is ubiquitous because there’s not many ways a content distributor can wow its customers to gain loyalty. Interfaces can only be so intuitive, and buffer-free streaming can’t have any less interruptions. But producing your own content is a sure way to differentiate yourself in a crowded market. Executives reconcile this expensive trend by claiming that forcing price conscious consumers into their ad-supported tier was their goal all along. However, customers are empirically less satisfied with ad-supported tiers even with the discount (Mountain Research). How far will expenses rise before customer satisfaction finally snaps?
Figure 1.5. Customers are decreasingly likely to recommend their subscriptions to others, indicating lower perceived value and satisfaction (Parks Associates).
Recap and alternatives
These five trends paint a dreary picture for the future of entertainment media. Streaming is increasingly vital in our daily lives because of its social and cultural significance (1), which is reflected by our spending habits relative to other items (2). But prices are skyrocketing as producers recoup their financial losses (3), and a single subscription is insufficient due to the strategy of platform-exclusive releases (4). As a result, customer satisfaction is rapidly decreasing even as the number of releases accelerate (5). So not only do I think these subscriptions aren’t worth the money, but the problem will surely exacerbate with time.
Now you must be thinking, no one is forcing me to buy a subscription if I think it’s a ripoff. And you’re right, because there is a rich space of alternatives to the streaming subscription model. On one hand there’s channel-based video like cable TV and Free Ad Supported Television (FAST, i.e. Tubi), but both are ridden with ad breaks and the former is incredibly expensive. On the other hand there’s on-demand video like renting and Ad-supported Video On Demand (AVOD, i.e. YouTube), but the former suffers from indecision while the latter suffers from limited selection. But on the third hand there’s piracy, which I’ll explain later. As we evaluate any alternative to the subscription mess, we have to ask ourselves, what are we really looking for? Streaming services must’ve done something right to have acquired such a cult following, but surely they made some tradeoffs. As such, the best content distribution solution will address consumer needs in descending order of importance.
Figure 1.6. Cost, ease of use, and content availabiliy are the most important attributes of a streaming service.
An immoral yet robust solution
This survey provides a qualitative framework to satisfy the average consumer. Streaming subscriptions hit most of the important attributes, but fail in some key points. FAST and AVOD are fine alternatives with their own tradeoffs, but personally I don’t have the patience for ads. Uninterrupted viewing is extremely important for me, so ad-free is my number 2 attribute. To abridge my argument, I’ll only consider piracy. But you’ll notice piracy is a particularly interesting solution because it complements the status quo precisely. Note that dash means “sometimes fullfils that attribute.”
| Attribute | Subscription | Piracy |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | X | |
| Ease of use | X | |
| Variety/availability of content | - | X |
| Streaming/playback quality | X | |
| Speed | X | |
| Accessibility of desired content | X | |
| Availability across devices | X | - |
| Available resolutions | X | X |
| Skippable ads feature | - | |
| Ad-free | X | |
| Offline content | - | X |
| Menu recommendations | X | |
| Content available live | - | X |
Remarkably, piracy excels in an attribute if and only if streaming fails in that attribute, \(P \leftrightarrow \neg S\). Streaming subscriptions can’t become more like piracy because they have to make money. But if piracy can pick up the best qualities of streaming subscriptions, then it would form the ultimate content distributor! And I believe I’ve devised a way for piracy to adopt the best attributes of streaming so that it’s Xs across the board.
What’s the caveat? There’s another attribute that the survey didn’t include: ethics. Services that you pay for with your time or money have the consent of the content owners, while piracy obviously does not. If you don’t want to pay for streaming subscriptions but care deeply about the ethics, then FAST or AVOD is the right alternative for you. But if your moral compass is demagnetized, we can start talking about a real solution to this problem. Piracy is not just a paltry coupon like restaurant welcome rewards, but rather an escape hatch from this subscription scam. There’s a straightforward way for piracy to match the quality of the subscription giants by using a combination of out-of-box thinking and extraneous disk space.
Part 2: Piracy is a bargain in the rough
… because it’s free but feared. I believe the subscription-based bundle model is a scam, and I’m not going to let myself be ripped off. I don’t care that piracy by the affluent is objectively unethical. I understand that it deprives content creators of some rightful income, even if it’s not technically stealing. Don’t you think it’s strange that we are paying substantially more for the same products from a few years ago? This is no coincidence or short term trend. I believe that the high cost of entry into content distribution combined with a market strategy shift by the oligopolist corporations has greatly diminished the value for money of streamed content. This is a natural consequence of free market forces pushing streamers to different corners of the market. Streaming is still unprofitable for many corporations, so expect this trend to exacerbate.
However, there is no free lunch. Streamed content from pirates is usually worse quality than from first-party distributors due to distribution limitations. There’s a good reason everyone isn’t using f2movies.to for their movies and Steam Unlocked for their games: the sites are unsexy and the download speeds are slow. Such services operate on shoestring budgets using servers located in “legally lax” countries (aka Russia). This isn’t a big problem for video games, software, and books because they take a long time to consume. Their service-level objective (SLO) requirement is quite relaxed, operating under a soft real-time deadline: I’m comfortable waiting even overnight for a large download to finish because of the content’s durability. But it’s a different story for movies, TV shows, and music, because we consumers expect them to be available on-demand without delay. The SLO requirement for streaming is far more stringent, operating under a hard real-time deadline: uninterrupted viewing is a non-negotiable requirement. Indeed, streaming media is actually a $100 billion dollar market, composed of two techniques to solve the buffering problem.
- Content delivery networks: Having all the media files on one computer would make your viewing experience proportional to your physical distance from that computer. Since Netflix is consumed worldwide, having one megaserver in their Californian headquarters would be a terrible idea outside of the west coast. The more hops along the journey, the longer it takes and more can go wrong. Instead, the content is cached on a geographically diverse set of servers so that you are physically close to the HEVC files no matter where in the world you travel. Since speed and bandwidth have diminishing returns on viewing experience, this distribution maximizes utility. Sorry to the Californians wanting to seamlessly stream 8k content. The drawback is that maintaining such servers is expensive and convoluted because of multinational taxation and policies, and the distribution process is split into two stages (Content creator \(\rightarrow\) CDN, then CDN \(\rightarrow\) user).
- Adaptive bitrate streams: Your internet connection constantly fluctuates, and streaming in a single resolution would lead to buffering when your computer “catches up.” Thus, content is split into few second segments on the server side, and each segment is encoded in many different resolutions. For video, there are 8 possible resolutions between 144p-2160p; for audio, there are 5 possible resolutions between 64 kbps-320kbps. The client, like Netflix in your browser, monitors current network speed and bandwidth to pick the highest resolution that’s expected to avoid buffering. This is like a dynamic programming problem, but with uncertainty. The drawback is that storing all content in k different resolutions takes k times more encoding computation and storage space. But disk space is no longer a concern considering each terabyte of hard disk currently costs $5.5 (Diskprices).
Even though modern pirated streaming sites implement these two techniques to some extent, they can’t compete with their deep-pocketed competitors who establish the consumer’s expectations. Piracy streaming sites must resort to serving very low resolutions at the threat of buffering. Also, these sites have strange domain names and are festered with ads for the people who haven’t discovered ad blockers. There’s a reason “w1.nites.is and chill” isn’t a common phrase. From the status quo, it seems that sophisticated network infrastructure is a necessary condition for seamless media streaming. Pirate services can’t easily use CDNs because servers in the US have to monitor such content to avoid copyright infringement. They can’t encode in many resolutions because CPU time is money. Thus, free piracy services cannot keep up with consumer expectations, so they are not viable alternatives at the moment. Yet the trends in streaming subscriptions are becoming too much for the average wallet to stomach, so we must still find some solution. Bank of America highlighted these empirical trends in this research report, and I will now contextualize the key points.