I want to agree with you, because I wish that was the case, but it isn't. The 15-25 set just doesn't care. If they can get a movie for free on bittorrent, or pay $20/mo to stream as many as they want, they'll go for bittorrent the majority of the time.
My sister also (like my sibling comment) tried Netflix, Hulu, and the other streaming media systems. Netflix doesn't have the content they care about, Hulu was great until they were flooded with commercials. The first media business that figures out how to sell to this generation will get adoption quickly.
This isn't a new story. They've been trying (and getting close: look at the SNL digital shorts and marketing campaigns like the Old Spice Guy) but so far haven't quite won over BitTorrent et al. yet. The longer they wait, the closer their product gets to the $0.99 song from iTunes in that the average consumer won't be willing to pay much more than $1 for it.
It's too soon to tell, but the model Apple has taken with iTunes Match seems promising. Basically, instead of selling access to the media (which they already do), they're selling a cloud service that's useful even if you already have the media. And they manage to not compete with themselves because the service is free if you buy the media from them. So free that it's not even a service, it's just the way their store works now.
The usage patterns of TV and movies are different than music, but they aren't so different that something like that couldn't work.
The first major difference is that people approaching 25 have a great deal more money than people at 15.
All that aside, I for one notice a huge predilection in my peers (of the 19-22 set)to buy into services such as hulu and netxflix, and to look there first for their media. Why? Because the services are instant, cheap, and of much better than most pirated media.
FYI, netflix charges $8 a month...significantly less than the 20 you site.
15 is usually around the age that kids start getting proficient enough with their computer that they can figure out how to bootleg movies. 25 is about the time that they mature out of it.
>The first major difference is that people approaching 25 have a great deal more money than people at 15.
Do they? Most of the people that I know around that age (I'm that age) have very little disposable income. While netflix (which doesn't have even remotely close to the same amount of titles as TPB) is only $8/mo, that $8/mo is a 12 pack of PBR.
>All that aside, I for one notice a huge predilection in my peers (of the 19-22 set)to buy into services such as hulu and netxflix, and to look there first for their media.
Are your peers mostly wealthy (relatively) computer programmers?
>significantly less than the 20 you [c]ite
Netflix and TPB aren't competitors. Do you think that major movie studios would offer all of their titles for $8/mo? There is already several massive experiments (netflix, hulu) taking place to test this, and the result is: no, they wouldn't.
My peers are generally not computer programmers, no, nor do they have much disposable income. They do live in the the united states, which means realtive certian other populations, they are insanely wealthy. We scrape by in the lower end of cost of living in this nation with large student debts, and housing costs in the range of $400 a month...from that, it isn't hard to split a netflix bill two or three ways. It costs, effectively, spare change to buy a netflix account between three people. Seriously on the margin of 80% of the people I know have a netflix account, with far fewer understanding the mechanics of bootlegging movies. We have netflix before we have a tv subscription.
Asserting that pirating is a question of maturity first and foremost is a very daring thing to do, to say the least.
I saw a report the other day on lower CD sales for local Quebec music. The whole time they were calling for the end of the world, then at the end of the show they mention that online sales are up. Nothing explaining why CDs are better for artist than online sales through iTunes and others. Nothing that says if the majority of loss sales are now digital purchases or if the total amount of buying is down. Instead it's the same bullshit stuff. CDs are down and we are making less money from CD sales. We need taxes on MP3 players that go (I don't get how exactly) to the artists etc...
Sorry that was unrelated as a rant but this is just how annoyed I am with the situation.
Consider that Rogers and Bell don't want to make it easy for anyone to steal their market share. I don't have cable, but I'd pay for Hulu, if it were available here. Look at the recent Internet Metering attempt by Rogers and Bell to stifle innovation in the way Canadians get TV and Movies.
Proof: Take a look at their top 100. only 2 you can stream in the US, all the 98 others are via DVD only.
Many in the "15-25 set" pay about $20/mo to download through an offshore VPS, private trackers and servers. This money would go to the content holders if they didn't cripple their "precious content" with bundling packages, intrusive advertisements, DRM and region restrictions.
My sister is in that range and she and most of her friends pay for content when they can, or so she tells me.
This is very obvious with music. Everybody I know has a music collection far bigger than what they could reasonably afford.
FTFY.