Are the arguments about people downloading movies still relevant?

The introduction of the internet has drastically changed the entertainment industry during the past 20 years. The way money can be made has completely changed and adapting to it has proven difficult. How are you able to survive as a company? Often the finger is pointed to the consumer who downloads everything. But is that still a valid argument?

When internet speeds were slow it was the MP3 and Napster who gave everyone with a computer the opportunity to download their favourite music in a few clicks. It was immensely popular and the music industry did everything it could in order to put a stop to it. The way they made money had been the same for decades, which made it hard for them to face reality and think of innovative ideas to adapt.

It would take years before a model was agreed upon with Apple where consumers could buy songs for only 99 cents. For the artists themselves performing live became more important as that’s where they could make most of their money. We’ve now come to the point where even buying music is slowly becoming a thing of the past. Services like Spotify and Apple Music offer music lovers about 30 million songs for around 10 dollars a month. Most new albums can be found on these services as soon as they are released and because of that there isn’t much reason anymore to get behind your PC to download one album. A service like Spotify can even be used without paying if you don’t mind commercials once in a while between tracks. It has taken some time, but the music industry has come to a point of maturity in which the discussion about illegally downloading is slowly disappearing.

But what is it like when it comes to movies? As within the music industry this market has changed a lot as well. Internet speeds have become sufficiently fast to be able to download movies within a couple of minutes. Still, if you have a Netflix subscription and the possibility to see an unlimited amount of movies at the cinema for a fixed price of around 20 euros (something already prevalent in Europe with the United States trying to introduce it as well) you have a big library of movies available to you. You can visit the cinema as much as you’d want and over here in the Netherlands you have around 1800 titles available with a press of a button and in other countries even more. Is downloading movie still something you would do? I guess the movie industry still is playing catchup. It regularly happens that movies that are out on DVD/Blu Ray/VOD still have not reached cinemas in other countries (or never will). Although there has been an improvement, the difference is still there. If the consumer wants to see the latest film by their favourite actor/actress/director the temptation is there to download if it isn’t immediately available in their region.

Distribution companies are struggling. Here in the Netherlands one of the big ones, A-Film had to close down. The market for physical media has collapsed because many consumers don’t want to own physical copies anymore. The prices of a single DVD or Blu Ray are higher than a Netflix subscription, which makes it understandable why the consumer isn’t willing to pay for them anymore. Of course you’ll always have people who will keep using programs like Popcorn Time, but as long as the movie industry isn’t willing to follow the model used by the music industry where you have worldwide release and immediate availability (both at home and in the cinema) a gap will remain between supply and demand where downloading is the bridge between them that won’t collapse yet.