In two years, the market for pirated services in Russia has grown by 71.4%, according to data from InterMedia’s annual report “Russian Cultural Economy”, cited by RBC. If in 2021 the market for illegal audio, video and book services amounted to 7 billion rubles, by the end of 2023 it will reach 12 billion rubles.
In this context, the turnover of online cinemas is falling and video streaming is stagnating. Thus, the turnover of online cinemas in 2022 decreased by 13%, from 99.6 billion rubles to 86.6 billion rubles. And at the end of 2023, the dynamics are estimated at only more than 3% (89.7 billion rubles). Before the Russian Federation launched a special military operation, the online cinema market was growing by a third year after year.
Legal audio services, which showed growth before 2020, have not yet returned to pre-crisis results. In 2022, compared to 2020, the total revenue of these companies decreased by 25%, up to 7 billion rubles. This year there has been an increase to 7.8 billion rubles.
As for content on physical media, this area has been experiencing gradual growth for the last two years. According to InterMedia, the book industry has overcome the negative dynamics in 2022.
According to preliminary data, in 2023 sales of printed, electronic and audiobooks will amount to 100 billion rubles, up from 99.8 billion rubles in 2022 and 63.4 billion rubles in 2021.
According to the head of InterMedia, Evgeny Safronov, “piracy” in itself is beneficial for the world’s large computer monopolies, so the fight against it does not seem effective.
Although a significant part of Western works of original and mass culture and art have ceased to be legal in Russia, demand for such content among citizens persists.
“The population buys equipment mainly to access creative content, and the difficulty of this access leads to a decrease in sales and a decrease in capitalization,” explains the expert.
Safronov added that the cultural economy is recovering to its pre-pandemic state mainly thanks to the notable increase in budget funding.
According to Denis Kuskov, director of the TelecomDaily agency, the growing popularity of pirated content is associated with the consumer’s desire to have access to world news.
In 2022, Yandex-owned Kinopoisk cut out clips mentioning LGBT people from the cult HBO series Sex and the City. Users of various platforms are complaining about the removal of some scenes from various products that Kinopoisk offers for viewing via a paid subscription.
Author:
Natalia Gormaleva
Source: RB
I am a professional journalist and content creator with extensive experience writing for news websites. I currently work as an author at Gadget Onus, where I specialize in covering hot news topics. My written pieces have been published on some of the biggest media outlets around the world, including The Guardian and BBC News.
