The good ol’ days of Australian entertainment were local Blockbuster stores, 3 day rentals on new releases and a very specific warning at the beginning of each movie:
We wouldn’t steal a car - nor a handbag - but turns out that yeah, we would steal a movie.
For years we were crowned piracy capital of the world. In 2015 Australia accounted for 18 per cent of illegal downloads globally.
Then in March 2015 something marvellous happened - Netflix expanded to Australia.
Couple that with local streaming service Stan coming on the scene and Australia’s appetite for piracy began to wane.
In 2014, 29 per cent of Australians aged 18 - 64 were ‘actively’ engaged in pirating videos, according to figures from Creative Content Australia. In 2018, that number dropped to 18 per cent.
We’re spending upwards of $1.4 billion annually on what is now a verifiable feast of streaming services. Add to that Disney+, launching in November.
Source: The Feed
But there are fresh concerns that the stress - and cost - of this streaming smorgasbord may drive us back to our old ways.
Piracy has been on the decline globally since 2011, but according to Sandvine’s Global Internet Phenomena Report 2018 - that trend is reversing, and the reason could be streaming service fragmentation.
“To get access to all of these services, it gets very expensive for a consumer, so they subscribe to one or two and pirate the rest,” Sandvine’s Cam Cullen said in a blog post.
Dr Marc C-Scott, Senior Lecturer in Screen Media at Victoria University, says that we could see a similar trend in Australia. He says the problem is the battle over exclusive content.
“So, if you want to watch something that’s only on Disney+, something that’s only on Stan, something that’s only on Netflix - all of a sudden you’re signed up to three streaming services.”
“We’re starting to get to the point where we are seeing aggregation and essentially what we’re going to see is a version of Foxtel.
And as we know, Australian’s aren’t too keen on paying for Foxtel.
Dr C-Scott warns we should also be worried about what this means for local content.
Having more international players in the Australian won’t necessarily mean more Australian content. It could, Dr C-Scott warns, go the other way.
“The government needs to step up, especially now we’ve got Disney coming in and potentially have Apple coming in,” C-Scott told The Feed.
At the moment, there are no guidelines for how much Australian content streaming services have to produce.
Source: The Feed
“The policy now is miles behind,” C-Scott says.
But the more international video on demand services that come through the further behind it falls.
Fairfax-owned Stan, who has historically committed to producing Australian content, may be hit the hardest when Disney pulls all of its content onto its own platform.
“The other issue for Stan is that they just signed a deal with Paramount Pictures who is owned by Viacom and Viacom is planning on merging with CBS who owns Channel 10."
He says it’s a difficult year ahead for the platform.
Stan could be in a sticky situation but I hope for Australian content’s sake that they’re around for a while.
