Gabe Newell famously said that the secret was to give a better service than the pirates. Steam has succeeded in this to an extent, admittedly also bolstered by the increase in malware in pirated releases.
Streaming no longer gives a better service than the pirates. It's not just the expense, it's the massive amounts of busywork required to juggle membership, free trials, accounts etc.. It can take longer to check if you have a currently active account on the relevant streaming service, reactivate, make reminders to cancel in a timely manner etc. than to run a torrent search and download a file via a VPN.
I am a very occasional TV watcher, so this admin load was getting intolerable compared to my levels of motivation. Hell, even trying to find something worth watching on Netflix was a source of stress- they don't really curate their content so there's a lot of brainrot and shovelware on there.
Cancelling reduced my stress considerably. I was paying a lot for a service I wasn't enjoying- it felt like an onerous obligation to interact with it. I told myself I'd re-sub for a month if there was something unmissable, but it hasn't been necessary yet. This is pretty telling.
The enshittification of streaming is making it less attractive and piracy more attractive even to people who can afford to pay. A lot of Business Factory types seem to assume that their users are all primarily financially motivated and that you fix the problem with carefully calibrated demand elasticity-aware pricing. However, it's not the whole solution, not even close. The story does touch on this, but it still feels like it's a point lost on those making the decisions.
Providing a service which is exhausting, annoying or unpleasant to use absolutely will irritate all of your customers, rich or poor.
Give a better service than the pirates. If you don't, don't be shocked when the public seek the path of least resistance in increasing numbers and go elsewhere.
