Irregular downloads: when the market fails its customers, they find another way

It’s hard not to feel a sense of early 2000s déjà vu when writing about this subject. Back in 2011, Gabe Newell, co-founder of Valve, said something that should still serve as the entertainment industry’s mantra: “Piracy is not a pricing problem, it’s a service problem.”

The recent surge in what I prefer to call irregular downloads — a far better term than “piracy” — is not about morality or criminality. It’s the natural consequence of a market that no longer serves its audience effectively.

The numbers speak for themselves. In 2024, HUB Muso logged 216.3 billion visits to sites offering irregular content. That’s an astronomical figure, even if it represents a 5.7% drop compared to 2023 and remains well above the 2020 low point. This isn’t a victory; it’s simply the evolution of an unmet demand. Globally, television remains the largest driver of irregular consumption, with 96.8 billion visits — down 6.8%. But digital publishing (e-books, comics, manga, web novels) is rising fast, growing 4.3% to 66.4 billion visits, driven overwhelmingly by manga (70% of the total) and web novels.

This isn’t a localized trend either. India accounts for 8.12% of global traffic, making it the second largest source after the United States at 12%. Ironically, the U.S. — long…